Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN review

All too rare in this life of film watching do you get a chance to watch a movie that literally plays as a revelation. A movie that unfurls across a screen as if to say, "No, this is how you do it."

Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of press associated with this book tour of mine and tons of radio and almost universally I get asked, "What is wrong with Hollywood?" And I answer, "Freddie Prinze Jr." In reality of course the problem goes much much deeper, but Freddie is indicative of the whole. The lack of sincerity, soul and humanity in his performance, films and characters are symptomatic of a larger lack of reality and emotional detachment which keeps Hollywood from being able to make a movie like Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN.

Alfonso Cuarón, the director behind the sublime movies A LITTLE PRINCESS and GREAT EXPECTATIONS has traveled back to Mexico to make what many feel, including myself, is his absolute best work to date. This is simply an amazingly human film. A movie that feels all at once to be real, entertaining, literate and fantastical.

What makes it real?

First this is a story about two best friends, whose girlfriends have taken off to Europe for a vacation that summer from High School. They are left behind to party the summer away, only to take off with a cousin’s wife for a mythical beach called "Boca del Cielo" aka "Heaven’s Mouth" that they created to lure her into a journey with them. A friend suggests a beach a couple of days’ journey by car and off they go. How is this real? The relationships, the frankness, the way they talk, move and live. The way the best friends try to beat each other at everything from speed of orgasm whilst masturbating upon diving boards at a closed country club to telling tall tales. The way they’ve created their own personal ethical universe that bonds them as more than mere friends. Then there is the cousin’s wife, played by the stunning Maribel Verdú. What makes her real? She is a stunningly beautiful mature woman hurting from the death of a relationship and a low point in her life wanting to find release in this venture with two young virile men whom she completely controls. She’s emotionally raw, thoroughly mature and absolutely vital. The portrayal of sex, sex talk, friendships, loves, multiple partners, the road, the conversation on that road, the people along that road and the stories in-between it all. From dealing with class struggles, political movements, agist revolutions, sexual dynamics and the trials of a boy a boy and a woman, it is all breathtakingly real.

What makes it entertaining?

The frankness and the reflection of the reality and stupidity of youth set loose. Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal) are absurd goofy friends with layers of insecurity as deep as their need to cling to machismo posturing. The way they celebrate in the ongoing flirtation with instantaneous spurts of masturbation as a simple release to crow about is sheer, dare I say it... dare dare DARE... EJACULATORY!!! The way the camera will force us to watch them frankly jerking to hilarious dialogue and absurd situations (all of which we can imagine as being real by parallels to our own lives) leaves us smiling and laughing in our seats.

Then there is the sex. The sex of the adolescent eager males. The way reckless abandon is thrown out the window. The way love never plays into it, and it is a breakneck rush to completion. By the camera never looking away, the audience can’t help, but laugh in curled over abdominal agony at the truth of it all.

Then there is the sensuality of it all. The beauty of these relationships, these friendships… Imagine this as an older telling of STAND BY ME. That same frank nature, the same wild types of times, but with boys old enough to be utterly preoccupied by sex and their own penises. Plus the addition of a woman fully aware of her situation wanting an escape from her current lot in life and celebrate the joys of life with these two insane old boys/young men.

What makes it literate?

From time to time in this film all the sound drops away. You may feel as though something has gone wrong with the sound in the projection booth, when suddenly the voice of the narrator (Daniel Gimenez Cacho from Alfonso Cuarón’s SOLO CON TU PAREJA) informing us of the significance of the moment, the location, the element, the background character, the future of a place and the past of the surroundings. You could be in the midst of joyous laughter, when suddenly ‘GOD’ reminds you that the real world is here, and at another time at a different hour this place of laughter held only the bitter salt of tears and blood. This is not only sobering, but creates an atmosphere that something is going to happen. And that whatever that happening is, it could happen at any moment, and it often does. Realize, this is not a safe film for safe people in safe lives, this isn’t the glossed over happiness of greater Southern California. This is Mexico, a country of immense joy and sorrow, of celebration and lamentation. Here… dreams almost always become lost or nightmares. This story of Tenoch, Julio and Ana is a story for everyone everywhere, in Spanish, English, French, Dutch, German, Japanese or what have you. The film feels like a novel of poignant emotion and joy.

What makes it fantastical?

It is fantastical because this is a story that a documentary crew could never capture. This is that wish to be a fly on a wall when such in such happened. This is the magic that fictional narrative filmmaking can bring upon its best moments. Here you live another’s experiences, you see their lives and you celebrate it and mourn it with them. At the end of the film you will have been taken on a journey and have memories about these three that you’ll cherish. I loved this film. Loved it because in a world of cinema that is so glossed over, so homogenized, so manufactured on a cast the familiar faces for x amount of y that I often end up with zzzzzzz’s… well, this reflection of reality from the minds of the brothers Cuarón, it just feels fantastical, like a golden fleece or a holy grail. A mythological exodus of youth into the reality of adulthood aged for not just today, but for so many tomorrows.

If you don’t go see this movie and you gripe about the limitations of the MPAA, the quality of every year of cinema and the stupidity of Hollywood, then add yourself to the list of problems with Hollywood. Take a seat right next to Freddie Prinze Jr and have that empty glare of dissatisfaction and cluelessness fall upon your face. Alfonso Cuarón has crafted a film of immense power and joy.

I saw the film with a mixture of adults and high school teenagers. The movie is unrated, that means that those in the know wish for many of you not to know. Well fuck them. Sneak in, watch this film. This is a thousand times the film that today’s High School generation ever gets a chance to see. This is really sexy, really about them and really wonderful. If you are a theater employee, the person selling the tickets, the person tearing the stubs. If you see a teenager wanting to see anything else, push them towards this, let them pass, get them in that theater. Contrary to the MPAA, The Congress and the various groups and societies that would blind a nation’s developing youth to films significant to their place in this world…. FUCK EM. Get into this film and enjoy the dream for a genre gone bankrupt for too long.

Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN is the film to watch in theaters right now, anything else is secondary. This is what film should be.