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Y tu mamá también

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Y tu mamá también
File:Y tu mamá también movie.jpg
Directed byAlfonso Cuarón
Written byCarlos Cuarón & Alfonso Cuarón
Produced byAlfonso Cuarón & Jorge Vergara
StarringMaribel Verdú
Gael García Bernal
Diego Luna
CinematographyEmmanuel Lubezki
Edited byAlex Rodríguez & Alfonso Cuarón
Music byNatalie Imbruglia
Frank Zappa
Miho Hatori (songs)
Distributed byMexico 20th Century Fox
United States IFC Films
United Kingdom Icon Entertainment
Spain Warner Bros.
Release date
June 8 2001
Running time
105 min.
LanguageSpanish
Budget$5 million (estimated)

Y tu mamá también (literally "And your mother, too", released in English-speaking markets under the original Spanish title) is a 2001 Mexican film written by Carlos Cuarón and directed by Alfonso Cuarón. A coming-of-age story about the road trip of two teenage boys with a woman in her late 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.

Primary cast

(All the principal characters share surnames with protagonists from Mexico's post-Columbian history.)

Plot summary

The film focuses on two boys, Julio, from a middle-class family, and Tenoch, whose father is a high-ranking political dignitary. The film begins with Tenoch having sex with his girlfriend, Ana. Half way through having sex, they both promise each other that they will not have sex with anyone else while Ana is away in Europe. They both promise and carry on having sex. In the morning when they are due to depart for the airport, Julio (Gael García Bernal) waits downstairs while his girlfriend, Ceci, looks for her passport. She asks Julio to come up and help her, but when he arrives upstairs, they have sex with each other on the bed as a farewell goodbye. Both girlfriends depart from the airport on a trip to Europe, leaving both boys to be bored. They hang around for a bit with drug-supplier friend Saba (Andrés Almeida) and go swimming but both are still bored.

The two go to a wedding and meet Luisa (Maribel Verdú) — the Spanish wife of Tenoch's cousin Alejandro (Jano). They ask where she is from, and find out that the guy they spilled a drink all over is Alejandro. They go on to talk about when they last met, and she starts to stir their sexual curiosity. They both invent a mythical secluded beach on the Oaxaca coast called Heaven's Mouth and ask her if she wants to come along; but she declines. A few days pass and while Jano is out on a seminar, Luisa goes to the doctors for some test results. Meanwhile, Tenoch and Julio talk about girlfriends and sex while they masturbate on the diving boards. Luisa gets a phone call from her drunk husband telling her that he has slept with an tranvestite, she is devastated at the news. The next day, Luisa rings Tenoch telling him that she wants to go with him and Julio to Heaven's Mouth. The two are now worried because Heaven's Mouth doesn't exist. They both go to the supermarket to buy food and beer. They ask their drug-supplier friend Saba for instructions to get to a beach similar to the one they described. The instructions are hazy and confusing, but they pick up Luisa and set off.

The three set off to the beach talking about their past and childhoods. They talk about their mates and other stories that are surprisingly true. Night falls and the trio stop in a village talking about their girlfriends and where they have gone. Luisa starts to ask questions about their fidelity. Luisa talks about how she met up with Jano. They all stop in for the night at the hotel, Luisa gets her own room, while Tenoch and Julio sleep in another room. They both talk about Luisa and how sad she was when she mentioned Jano. They both decide to look through her window and are very surprised to see her upset, they decide to leave her alone. Next morning, Luisa is up and ready to go, but Julio and Tenoch are not after a sleeping in. While traveling Luisa tells them she knows that they saw her last night, saying she was naked. Both deny it and go on to talk about who they have had sex with in the past. They then talk about how they can have sex with any of the girls they know. Passing through a village, the car breaks down and has to be towed to the garage, the trio have to stay in a hotel for the night while the car gets repaired.

Luisa finds a public telephone, and calls her husband. Leaving a message on the answering machine, she tells him that she is leaving him. They find a hotel, Luisa gets her own room and Julio and Tenoch get their own. While having a shower Tenoch discovers there is no shampoo, so Tenoch decides to visit Luisa's room for some shampoo. He enters her room and sees she is upset. She denies anything is wrong with her. She asks him to remove his towel, which he does and Luisa states that he gets excited quickly. She tells him to masturbate, but he is uneasy doing it in front of her. He finally does after Luisa takes her top off. She tells him to come closer to have oral sex. Luisa asks if he wants to feel her, and helps him remove her knickers before they have sex. Julio watches from the door and walks away disappointed in what he has just seen. He sits by the pool, and when Tenoch joins him, they have a race. When the race is over, Julio tells Tenoch that he has had sex with his girlfriend, Ana. Tenoch storms off, which makes Julio pleased that he had seen Luisa having sex with Tenoch. At dinner, Luisa can sense some tension between Tenoch and Julio, but doesn't bother asking.

After going to bed, Tenoch asks how many times Julio had sex with Ana. Tenoch gets upset with Julio for betraying him, and they continue to argue long into the night, even coming close to blows at one time. Early next morning, the car is repaired and they set off again, but soon after, Luisa starts to climb into the back, Tenoch pulls over and storms off, before Julio can get out of the car, Luisa starts kissing him and both of them start to strip naked and have sex. Afterwards, Luisa meets Tenoch outside and asks him why he is miserable. Luisa eventually apologizes for having sex with both of them. They set off again and Tenoch comes up with his own confession: he has had sex with Julio's girlfriend, Ceci. Julio stops the car and gets out to fight Tenoch, but the latter locks his door so he cannot be reached. Luisa storms off down the road when both men refuse to calm down. They are both stunned, but continue the argument. Julio makes him kneel and say he is sorry for having sex with Ceci. They manage to pick up Luisa and she sets some ground rules.

By nightfall they are lost, but turn down into a dirt track and the car gets stuck and so they go to sleep. The next morning, they realize they have arrived at a beach and stay to relax. Luisa sunbathes, Tenoch starts building a tent and Julio starts swimming, until local fishermen arrive by boat. The fisherman's family arrive on the beach to join them and soon Julio, Tenoch and Luisa join them on the small boat. The family reveals that the beach they are heading for is Heaven's Mouth, giving them much relief. They spend most of the day on the boat and come back to find that some pigs that had escaped from a nearby farm wrecked their campsite. After scaring them away, the trio head off to a nearby village. To pass the time, Tenoch and Julio play a football board game, while Luisa tells Jano that she hasn't left him out of revenge, but because she knew about all his affairs and the many women he had been with. She hoped he would change. She tries to explain the real reason behind her decision, but she fails and soon hangs up.

In the evening, all three sit down and talk and laugh about how happy they are that Luisa met them. They have a great time, drinking and joking about the sex each boy had with Luisa. Luisa gets drunk and drags both up to dance with her. The three end up in bed together, where the two boys are at first focused upon Luisa, 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. Julio and Tenoch go back to the campsite to collect the trashed stuff from there.

In the afternoon, Julio and Tenoch head home, and realize that their families never noticed they were gone on a trip. Luisa stays in San Bernabé to explore the coves. When Ana and Ceci get back from Europe, they break up with Tenoch and Julio. Two months later, Tenoch begins to date his neighbor, while Julio dates a girl in his French class a few months after that. Both Tenoch and Julio stop seeing each other and end their friendship. The dénouement of the story takes place one year later, during which time 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, 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.

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. The film was a huge success in Mexico, but due to its "C" rating (meaning only adults could see it), there were a number of cases involving student protests, where teenagers demanded to the cinema's owners to let them watch the film. In one instance in Morelia, there was a group of students that got naked in public to protest not being able to see the film. [citation needed]

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?"[1]

Awards

Nominations

Notes

  • The DVD includes the short film Me La Debes by Carlos Cuarón.

References

  1. ^ Roger Ebert (2002-04-05). "Y Tu Mama Tambien". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2007-06-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
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