Y tu mamá también
Apr. 20th, 2002 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rsadelleThe two movies [Y tu mamá también and Amores perros] boast the same young actor, Gael García Bernal, whose moist and slender eyes miss nothing, and who can skip from bullish to frail within a single scene; he and his co-star, Diego Luna, have known each other in real life since they were kids, and that companionship lends an oiled ease to their hanging out, and to the filthy patter of their private jokes. How they felt about kissing each other or about the lovely Maribel Verdú--at once loosely comic and contained, a wet dream with a dry wit--sliding to her knees before them both, with a hand on each belt buckle, are topics best left to the imagination of the audience, who will leave the theatre with thirsts of their own to quench. Talk about Heaven's Mouth.
--Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, March 18, 2002
I saw Y tu mamá también last night. Completely coincidentally, we talked about national identity in my Spanish film class yesterday morning. The national identity in Mexico, we discussed, includes an element of la Raza, the Native American cultures that were there before the Spanish. The government, however, is mostly if not all of strictly European descent. You can see this in the movie. Tenoch's father is the Secretary of State, privileged and European. But at the time of Tenoch's birth, he was grabbed with a sudden spurt of patriotism and gave his son an Aztec name.
The characters all have last names that are significant in terms of Mexican history--Iturbide, Zapata, Cortés, the last being the name of the lone Spaniard. I'm working on teasing out the meaning of this film. What is Cuarón trying to say? Is he saying something about national identity with his scenes of the rich kids driving their station wagon through the painfully poor countryside? Is he saying something about the conquistadors? Is he saying something about infidelity? He at least explicitly explores the last. The film begins with Tenoch (played by the unbelievably beautiful Diego Luna) begging his girlfriend as they have sex not to fuck any Italians. She demands similar promises from him, and in the end, neither one promises much of anything.
At the airport, we get to see the boys saying that they wish the girls would just go already, the girls saying they want to be there already, and the boys and girls telling each other how much they'll miss one another. It is soon after this that Julio and Tenoch meet Luisa and offer to take her with them to the beach. The boys think only of sex. Luisa seeks escape. They get their sex, separately and together. She gets her escape. And all of it is against the background of a Mexico that is at once beautiful and unbearably poor. The boys', and Luisa's, casual ignorance of the poverty around them should make anyone with a heart think twice about what they're doing, especially in contrast with Julio's sister who lets them take the car only because he promises to let her take it to Chiapas to take food and medicine to the people there. But she appears only for a moment, and we learn of the bargain only through the voice over. Is Cuarón trying to make us think about that contrast, or is it simply there because that's the way things are in Mexico?
The friends' hold on paradise is no sooner found than lost, and their final scene together knocks you sideways, even though it involves no more than a quiet talk in a café. Only the surest talents can deliver this offhand profundity; maybe Cuarón was thinking of Sentimental Education, in which Flaubert's twin heroes, likewise, sign off with a touch so light it makes you cry.
--Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, March 18, 2002
Make no mistake about it; Y tu mamá también will break your heart. But that's no reason not to see it. It's a wonderfully done film, with some incredibly beautiful visual sequences and a fascinating storytelling structure.
--Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, March 18, 2002
I saw Y tu mamá también last night. Completely coincidentally, we talked about national identity in my Spanish film class yesterday morning. The national identity in Mexico, we discussed, includes an element of la Raza, the Native American cultures that were there before the Spanish. The government, however, is mostly if not all of strictly European descent. You can see this in the movie. Tenoch's father is the Secretary of State, privileged and European. But at the time of Tenoch's birth, he was grabbed with a sudden spurt of patriotism and gave his son an Aztec name.
The characters all have last names that are significant in terms of Mexican history--Iturbide, Zapata, Cortés, the last being the name of the lone Spaniard. I'm working on teasing out the meaning of this film. What is Cuarón trying to say? Is he saying something about national identity with his scenes of the rich kids driving their station wagon through the painfully poor countryside? Is he saying something about the conquistadors? Is he saying something about infidelity? He at least explicitly explores the last. The film begins with Tenoch (played by the unbelievably beautiful Diego Luna) begging his girlfriend as they have sex not to fuck any Italians. She demands similar promises from him, and in the end, neither one promises much of anything.
At the airport, we get to see the boys saying that they wish the girls would just go already, the girls saying they want to be there already, and the boys and girls telling each other how much they'll miss one another. It is soon after this that Julio and Tenoch meet Luisa and offer to take her with them to the beach. The boys think only of sex. Luisa seeks escape. They get their sex, separately and together. She gets her escape. And all of it is against the background of a Mexico that is at once beautiful and unbearably poor. The boys', and Luisa's, casual ignorance of the poverty around them should make anyone with a heart think twice about what they're doing, especially in contrast with Julio's sister who lets them take the car only because he promises to let her take it to Chiapas to take food and medicine to the people there. But she appears only for a moment, and we learn of the bargain only through the voice over. Is Cuarón trying to make us think about that contrast, or is it simply there because that's the way things are in Mexico?
The friends' hold on paradise is no sooner found than lost, and their final scene together knocks you sideways, even though it involves no more than a quiet talk in a café. Only the surest talents can deliver this offhand profundity; maybe Cuarón was thinking of Sentimental Education, in which Flaubert's twin heroes, likewise, sign off with a touch so light it makes you cry.
--Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, March 18, 2002
Make no mistake about it; Y tu mamá también will break your heart. But that's no reason not to see it. It's a wonderfully done film, with some incredibly beautiful visual sequences and a fascinating storytelling structure.