Y tu mamá también
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| Y tu mamá también | |
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| Directed by | Alfonso Cuarón |
| Produced by | Alfonso Cuarón & Jorge Vergara |
| Written by | Carlos Cuarón & Alfonso Cuarón |
| Starring | Maribel Verdú Gael García Bernal Diego Luna |
| Music by | Natalie Imbruglia Frank Zappa Miho Hatori (songs) |
| Cinematography | Emmanuel Lubezki |
| Editing by | Alex Rodríguez & Alfonso Cuarón |
| Distributed by |  20th Century Fox IFC Films Icon Entertainment Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | June 8, 2001 |
| Running time | 105 min. |
| Language | Spanish |
| Budget | $5 million (estimated) |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Y tu mamá también (literally "And your mother, too", released in English-speaking markets under the original Spanish title) is a 2001 Mexican film directed by Alfonso Cuarón. A coming-of-age story about the road trip of two teenage boys with a woman in her twenties, the film is set against the backdrop of the political and economic realities of present-day Mexico, specifically at the end of the uninterrupted seventy-year line of Mexican presidents from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and the rise of the opposition headed by Vicente Fox. The film achieved great success in its native country and received awards and critical acclaim in foreign territories.
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[edit] Primary cast
- Maribel Verdú: Luisa Cortés
- Gael García Bernal: Julio Zapata
- Diego Luna: Tenoch Iturbide
- Diana Bracho: Silvia Allende de Iturbide
- Andrés Almeida: Diego 'Saba' Madero
- (All the principal characters share surnames with protagonists from Mexico's post-Columbian history.)
[edit] Plot summary
After their girlfriends depart on a trip to Europe, Julio (Gael García Bernal) and Tenoch (Diego Luna) are left free to make their own holiday plans. Julio is from a middle-class family, while Tenoch's father is a high-ranking political dignitary. At a wedding they encounter Luisa (Maribel Verdú) — the Spanish wife of Tenoch's cousin Alejandro — who stirs their sexual curiosity. Hoping she will come along, they invent a mythical secluded beach on the Oaxaca coast and tell her they want to go there; but she declines.
A few days later, after her husband confesses to her in a drunken phone call that he has slept with another woman, she changes her mind and agrees to go to the beach with them. This is now a problem for the boys because they do not know how to find a place like the one they described to her as well as figure out how they are going to get a car. They enlist the help of their drug-supplier friend Saba (Andrés Almeida), who gives them rather hazy instructions.
During the trip, sexual banter between Julio and Tenoch takes place, in which it gradually becomes clear that they have been sleeping with each other's girlfriends. At first, this revelation is met with disgust and anger, which later gives way to some degree of excitement at the thought. They also battle for the sexual favors of Luisa, who sleeps first with one, then with the other one, She later teases them that they should really be having sex with each other. Luisa is frequently seen crying alone during the trip; both Tenoch and Julio are aware of this. Eventually, with the help of a local fisherman the trio discovers a place that is very similar to what they had described to her and even get a local boat tour guide to mention the name they had made up.
One evening, after lengthy talk about sex and masturbation, the three end up in bed together, where the two boys are at first focused upon the woman but soon start kissing each other passionately. The next morning, Julio and Tenoch wake up next to each other and react awkwardly, before hurriedly deciding to leave. Luisa prefers to stay with the fisherman's family.
The dénouement of the story takes place one year later, during which Tenoch and Julio have not seen each other. The two friends bump into each other on the street and agree to go and have a cup of coffee together. They talk of their friends from long ago (other stories are taking place off-camera and are merely mentioned in passing by them), as well as update each other on where their lives are. It is revealed that Luisa was terminally ill with cancer, explaining her sudden change of mood when she got the bad news from her doctor. She knew of her illness all throughout the trip, and decided to live this road-trip as a last hurrah of sorts. After their brief and uncomfortable reunion at the restaurant, Tenoch and Julio never see each other again, their friendship destroyed by that one night of passion.
While the (mostly sexual) interplay takes place among the three characters, an omniscient narrator points out the past and future of the seemingly innocent roadside and other people in the film, contributing to the movie's underlying mood of foreboding and ambivalence — that is, the constant underscoring of the duality between rich and poor, city and country, the European and the indigenous, gay and straight, and the living and the dead. The narration of the pasts and futures of these insignificant characters happens as though they were plot lines stands in contrast to the unstated plot line of the story: Julio and Tenoch's homo-erotic attraction to each other.
[edit] Responses to the film
Y tu mamá también was a critical success, garnering awards such as the Venice Film Festival best screenplay award. It was also a runner-up for the National Society of Film Critics Awards for Best Picture and Best Director and was nominated for the 2002 Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay.
This film is also a good example of the widely varying standards in movie rating systems: The movie was released without a rating in the U.S. because it was believed that an NC-17 would be unavoidable. Other countries like France and the Netherlands regarded the film fit to be seen by twelve-year-olds. This perceived excessiveness of censoring of sexuality (especially when compared to the much more accepting attitude towards violence) by the MPAA even prompted noted movie critic Roger Ebert to question why movie industry professionals were not outraged: "Why do serious film people not rise up in rage and tear down the rating system that infantilizes their work?"
[edit] Awards
[edit] Nominations
- Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay (Carlos Cuarón & Alfonso Cuarón)
- BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay (Carlos Cuarón & Alfonso Cuarón)
- BAFTA Award for Best Film not in the English Language
- Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film
- Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media
[edit] Notes
- The DVD (Region 1 version) includes the short film Me La Debes by Carlos Cuarón.
[edit] External links
| The films of Alfonso Cuarón |
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| Sólo con tu pareja • A Little Princess • Great Expectations • Y tu mamá también • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban • Paris, je t'aime • Children of Men • The History of Love • The Memory of Running |
