Alex DeLarge Gives Us A Countryman's View On Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN!!

Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.

Alex DeLarge is one of our regular chatters, a Mexican by birth, and a film nut. He saw Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN last year during the film's original run, but never wrote in about it. I can't say this strongly enough... for our readers around the world... if you see something in your native cinema that you love that hasn't been exported yet, then write us about it. We depend on you to let us know when there's a gem worth looking out for.

Here's Alex to give you his take on the film that IFC is releasing in New York and Los Angeles today:

Hi Mori, 'tis Alex, the Mexican droogie regular from the AICN chatroom. I'm writing to send a review of the film Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN, which I saw about six months ago but never got around to review because I'm such a lazy fucker. Having read Beaks' extraordinary review, and considering my limited experience with the English language, I will not even aspire to writing in that league, but rather bring my Mexican perspective to it. Since I'm in Mexico for spring break, I bought the VHS (DVD is not out yet, apparently) and re-watched it with the purpose of writing a review and see if you'd like to post it.

AND TO GET THE FUCK ON WITH IT, here it is:

Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN was directed, produced and co-written by Alfonso Cuarón. His brother, Carlos Cuarón, was the writer and the person to blame for the seminal idea of the film (pun intended, but badly executed). To sweeten the deal even further, Cuarón's longtime DP, the amazing Emmanuel Lubezki, was in charge of the cinematography. Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna and Maribel Verdu star in it.

What will you get out of Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN? You'll get the long-due validation that Mexican life does not begin or end in Mexico City. You'll get to see a movie so honest that it might as well be a documentary. And you'll get to see legendary DP Emmanuel Lubezki beautifully capturing a money shot in a pool.

In the process, you will also see the first Mexican movie that manages to be entertaining, funny, dramatic and as far away from preachy as you can be.

Now, this is not the first time Cuarón has grappled with the subject of sexuality. Looking back at the beginning of his career, you can find SOLO CON TU PAREJA (which could be translated as Only With Your Mate). While an interesting film, it showed a lack of craftmanship that did little for the ethos of its director as a philosopher (but it did get him a Hollywood contract, with which he made "The Little Princess" and "Great Expectations".) However, the approach to sexuality in Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN and the expertise in which the cast and crew develop the concept has created a unique and beautiful monster of a movie, and quite possibly, the first movie that comes near to approaching the real "Mexican experience".

The movie tells the story of Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal, of "Amores Perros" and the upcoming Argentinean project "Vidas Cruzadas") and Tenoch (Diego Luna, of "A Sweet Scent of Death" and the upcoming "Frida" with Salma Hayek). Tenoch and Julio are the best of friends. Their lives are ruled by hormones and the possibilities of improving their chances of releasing them upon a female. But aye, there's the glitch. Their girlfriends are off to vacation in Europe and even though they have sworn each other to be faithful, they begin to look for sexual escapades as soon as the girls board their plane. When their countless possibilities of acquiring poontang turn into one failure after the other, the boys begin to consider that they might just have to spend the summer sexless. And what do they do when they find themselves in this situation? What any normal teenager does : they jerk off into a pool, dedicating their orgasm to Salma Hayek.

And then, the boys' prayers are answered in the form of a Spanish beauty named Luisa (Maribel Verdu), the twenty-eight year old wife of Tenoch's cousin, who is promptly invited to Boca Del Cielo, a beautiful paradise of a virgin beach that they...sort of made up. After a disenchantment with her husband, Luisa accepts the offer, and Tenoch and Julio begin to bullshit their way through a road trip, in which Julio and Tenoch will learn that their friendship might not be as strong as they thought and that lies hurt, but sometimes the truth hurts even more.

The dialogue is almost flawless. Through the script, the Cuarón brothers manage to turn the two sex hounds into well-rounded, three dimensional characters that you actually can't help to care about in the end. One of the main problems in Mexican films is that every character speaks too much alike, and Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN gladly does not suffer from this disease. Kudos to the two writers for making a script that is both authentic and entertaining.

It also seems that Alfonso Cuarón and Emmanuel Lubezki decided to shed the classy-looking, awe-inspiring visual style that they had shown in The Little Princess and Great Expectations and decided to make a more visually honest film. Visually, Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN shows you the colours of Mexico without embellishment. While I would have loved to see the Sleepy Hollow Lubezki visuals applied to a Mexican road trip, that would have been a horrible decision for this particular project.

The three main actors do their job beyond well. I believe that these are some of the first characters that ring true outside of the Mexico City area. Gael Garcia Bernal gives his best performance to date as Julio, and his silent anguish as the lower-class friend to Tenoch's rich brat is both beautiful and heart-wrenching to watch. Maribel Verdu, in my opinion, is the weakest member of the cast, but then again, this might be because her character is the most underwritten, although only in the sense that Tenoch and Julio seem to be working on the same level, while Luisa is after all, an adult who can see right through their dogmas. Finally, I feel I must make an honourable mention to Diego Luna, as Tenoch, who gives not only the best performance on the film, but also proves that he is one of the most interesting young actors in Mexico at the moment. His Tenoch is beautifully hued and filled with contradictions, and he does with his performance everything that the script needed to come alive.

My only criticism (albeit it is a huge one) is the narration, which sometimes works but mostly it just tends to downright take you out of the movie and punch you in the face so you pay attention to it. Bad bad bad bad bad editing choice, in my humble opinion. To their credit, the narration is entirely justified in the ending of the film, which brings the whole odyssey to a close that is both tight and unconventional.

I have no idea of how the United States audiences will see Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN. I realize it might not translate as well, because some of the expressions are just way too Mexican to ever find an equivalent in another language. Nudity is very abundant as well, but it is rather tame when compared with the things one can find in other movies (besides porn, dirty minds). I guess we can all just hope that U.S. audiences will take time to see a subtitled film that deals with teenage issues of sexuality, innocence, and friendship far better than any American Pie or Porky's will ever be able to do.

Thanks, man. I'll be putting my own review of this up in an hour or so...

"Moriarty" out.