Y Tu Mama Tambien

What a difference ten years make. After making the English-language films The Little Princess and Great Expectations, Alfonso Cuaron returned to his home country of Mexico in 2001 to make Y Tu Mama Tambien, which earned him and his brother Carlos an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. It was an international success, and also became known for its explicit sexuality, but upon a second viewing last night I marveled at its impeccable structure and dialogue.

The film is basically a Penthouse letter come to life. Two recent high school graduates, Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal, see off their girlfriends as they head for a European vacation. As with Solo Con Tu Parejo, the film begins with two people having sex, which sets the tone. The two boys are bored and horny, and at a wedding meet Luna's cousin's wife, a pretty and somewhat older Spaniard (Maribel Verdu). When her husband confesses adultery, she impulsively takes the boys up on an offer to head to a secluded beach.

So what we have here is both a road picture and a coming of age picture, but Cuaron and his brother Carlos are able to elude the cliches (mostly). The boys can't believe their luck, and Verdu is a fantasy come to life, as she quizzes them on their sexual histories. Eventually she takes Luna to bed, which drives a wedge between the boys, and she remedies that by having sex with Bernal, but the boys are still in competition, confessing that they have slept with each other's girlfriends.

Through all of this we get periodic, novelistic voiceover narration that places the film in context with Mexican history. It is 1999, when the seven-decade ruling party loses an election, and there are protests in the streets. Luna's father is a politician, and unlike many Mexican films, we see right into the upper class of that country. The narration offers us information on peripheral things, such as why a man has been run over by a bus, or what happens to a bunch of pigs that destroys the travelers' campsite.

And the film is sexy. The film opens with two sex scenes, and the scene in which Verdu seduces Luna is the kind of thing that any teenage boy (and former teenage boy) can't help but getting aroused at--"Take off your towel." Later, there will be the threesome that alters the boys relationship.

Cuaron then went off to Harry Potter land and his status as a big-shot director, but Y Tu Mama Tambien (which means "And Your Mother, Too") is the centerpiece of his career.