The Age of Innocence

Y Tu Mamá También
(****)

Sasha Stone
Mirror film critic

   Y Tu Mamá También, directed by Mexico’s Alfonso Cuarón, is yet another example of Mexico’s vibrant film scene. Cuarón’s beautifully painful, precisely drawn coming-of-age story will ultimately find itself among the genre’s best, right up there with Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” and Peter Yates’ “Breaking Away.”
   Like these films, Y Tu Mamá También reflects back on youth with a great deal of heart, irony and a sense of the bigger picture — what is happening in the world at large.
   Know this: there isn’t a better film out there right now, not even counting leftovers from last year, than Y Tu Mamá También, and to see it is to be counted among those lucky enough to share in film history. It’s a film that will pop up again and again in film classes both to celebrate Mexico’s new wave and to illustrate what good writing and original storytelling are all about.
   Cuarón, who wrote the film with his brother Carlos Cuarón, has created memorable characters who maneuver through deceptively familiar situations and find themselves making big decisions on the spot. The story opens on two great pals, one rich, the other poor (or, more accurately, middle class, but the gap is no less big) who are caught in that moment right before self-awareness starts, before the truth catches up with you, and death becomes a real possibility.
   Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Tenoch (Diego Luna) are ditched by their girlfriends for the summer and brazenly invite a beautiful older (but still quite young) woman, Luisa (Maribel Verdu) on a trip to a fictitious beach called “Heaven’s Mouth.”
   Much to the shock of the two boys, Luisa agrees to go with them. They borrow Julio’s sister’s car “for five days” and head toward some unknown, mysterious destination, hoping to impress their gorgeous passenger.
   Along the way, the boys introduce Luisa to their code of living, a list of ten rules they supposedly live by and know by heart - (the truth is unattainable no matter how hard you search, don’t screw each other’s girlfriends, whack off all the time, etc.). Luisa is amused by their youthful exuberance and even shares a thing or two about her personal life.
   But ultimately, this journey will take all three to unexpected places. The lessons they learn will last a lifetime and they will always remember this trip no matter how hard they try to forget.
   What makes Y Tu Mamá También so good, isn’t the raw sex scenes, which you’ve undoubtedly read about in many a review by this point, but the startlingly astute, refreshing prose that hits the film at random — a style that is by no means new but one that feels necessary at this point, particularly as American films seem reluctant to deliver good writing anymore.
   Much of what goes on between the three characters isn’t on the surface — it’s something they hide from each other but that a narrator reveals to us. It’s these details in the story that are among the reasons why the film captivates the way it does — the narrator’s stories are not merely tolerated for the sake of clarity or plot development — they enrich the whole experience of seeing the film. It’s these moments — and so many others — that linger long after the film is over.
   The film also offers us culture-starved gringos, whose perception of Mexicans is that they are all very poor migrant workers who long to immigrate to the US, a very different, and truly beautiful Mexico. It is rare for Americans to see how rich Mexicans live, or to even imagine that they exist. What a treat, also, to meet two Mexican boys who not only don’t want to come and live in America but look down at people who do. And Cuarón’s Mexico is so beautiful, so Mexican, why would they?
   This is also a Mexico of students who want to be writers, young women who march in protest lines and are sexually aware, like Luisa, who can be counted among cinema’s greatest sex goddesses — a woman who wants to teach blundering, clumsy young men that it’s about a whole lot more than wham bam thank you ma’am.
   Running throughout Cuarón’s film is the same study on class distinction as the director explored in his last film, “Great Expectations,” starring Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow. It is the unspoken conflict between Julio and Tenoch that functions as each character’s trump card. Between the lines is the idea that great art will always transcend class.
   Y Tu Mamá También makes the point that there are frozen moments in time in which happiness seems almost unlimited. If tragedy’s shadow is lurking somewhere, it remains, for a time, unseen. The moment is always doomed to pass, nothing lasts forever, but there is much to say, and Cuarón says it well, about life’s spontaneous gifts —who gives them, and who takes them away.