Charolastra! Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN on DVD

Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN is an IFC Films presentation, and is unrated but contains strong sexual content involving teens, drug use and language. It runs 105 minutes and opened in limited theatrical release March 15, 2002.

INTRODUCTION
In America, there’s a kind of soul missing from countless teen farces about teenaged kids with over-reactive hormones, and leave it to a Spanish movie to do the job. Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN is a foreign film from director Alfonso Cuaron, which was released in America limited and unrated, in order to escape an NC-17 rating for the graphic sexual nature of the film. But American ratings hold no moral waiver over anybody, and so more outrageously sick movies keep getting released in America with R-ratings. But think of this movie as a sexual farce crossed with a bonding picture, and that this movie doesn’t go too far with its gross sexual humor as possible, and maybe you’ll understand the odd appeal to this movie. But enough of me, I’ll cut to the

STORY
Okay, the opening scene you might have heard of, or maybe not so, but here is a description: young Tenoch (Diego Luna) is making sweet love to his girlfriend Ana (Ana Lopez Mercado) (in front of a huge HAROLD & MAUDE poster) before she ends up leaving him on a vacation to Italy. There is an engaging conversation about swearing to infidelity, and then it looks like they’re back to sex again. The same kind of thing occurs between Tenoch’s best friend, Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal), and his girlfriend, Ceci (Maria Aura), who have a quick one in her bedroom. With their girlfriends out of play, it’s a summer of boredom and chastity as these two sex-hungry boys smoke weed, jack off and strike out all in a sad course of events. But these macho young males get more than they bargain for one day…

They attend a wedding and run into the wife of one of Tenoch’s cousins, the stunning Luisa Cortes (Maribel Verdu). They try to pick up on her using the old "Heaven’s Mouth" trick. Okay, maybe it’s not common, but they do promise a wonderful beach paradise by that name, even though they are plainly making up the place. Luisa shrugs them off, yet answers back with a positive yes after her husband calls her one night to proclaim his inebriated infidelity. What can they do? They run to their constantly baked friend Saba (Andres Almeida) for directions to any secluded beach and borrow a car in order to get the road trip started.

These two boys are both mad for Luisa, and through the course of a long, dusty, winding trip, they engage in conversations about love, life, girls, and "Charolastras" (astral cowboys is the translation). But these boys are put to the test as they both succumb to the charms of the older woman, and needless to say, their lives are going to change.

OVERVIEW
The first thing I will delve into is the narration, by Daniel Gimenez Cacho, which provides ample amounts of character development as well as an attitude. This attitude concerns social structures and political views through the three main characters and the many stops on the "road to nowhere." Tenoch is the son of a Harvard-schooled politician who was accused of selling poor people contaminated food, and Julio is in the lower class, supported by a working mother. As for Luisa, whom we discover works as a dental technician, she never felt much comfortable at times in the circle of her husband, Jeno (Juan Carlos Remolina), pressured by dinner guests to offer opinions on things she outwardly claimed to not follow. It’s kind of like a catalyst for these three to get involved in some relationship. As for the scenery, there’s the highway accident and the fisherman who will lose what he has got for the construction of a luxury hotel. The narration is one superb piece of storytelling that helps to comprehend the lessons these teens will go through.

Next, I will offer a brief praise of the wonderful Mexico City landscape, and I enjoyed Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography throughout. The most appealing scenery lies at the end of the movie, and I wouldn’t dream of giving it away. It’s lovely, and you must take my word. The narrator also stops to point out some life-based scenery, including the village Tenoch’s nanny was born and raised in before seeking work at 13.

I hereby move to the script by Alfonso Cuaron and his brother Carlos. Alfonso made a couple of popular English titles (A LITTLE PRINCESS and the 1997 remake of GREAT EXPECTATIONS), but forget those two. I enjoyed the script for all the excellently testosterone-packed banter between its heroes, as well as the approach to the Luisa character. She’s worldly wise in some way, a dynamo of passion who accompanies her perhaps for the experience that she and the boys need to have. She opens the hearts of our two protagonists, so that they spill their sexual exploits out, and so they have less to keep inside while she draws them into sex. It’s the moral of the story that she obviously tries to embody, in that women are clearly people and not objects of masturbatory desire, and sex between two people means more than a quick screw. This latter sentence is employed with surprising daring through this movie.

The acting and directing categories will receive their own places, dutifully, in this review. They are also a couple of the things that make this a five-star picture.

This is in some circles described as a Mexican version of AMERICAN PIE. Hold the phone. This is by no means one of those raunchy teenage comedies where characters are introduced for outrageous guffaw purposes. We are actually blessed with fleshed-out characters and sexual situations that remain serious in their nature. The thing is that the MPAA has yet to realize their rating system allows some really terrible choices in what kind of films 17-year-old kids should see with a parent accompanying them. If I was older and had a child whom I’d take to one of these films, I would hands down choose this over VAN WILDER or JACKASS or any of these comedies that seek to push the limits of bad taste in an R-rated feature. But this was unrated, so that NC-17 wouldn’t kill this movie. Down with the dumbed-down ratings, I say.

This movie avoids any kind of unnecessary commercial aspirations and keeps its roots buried in heart, flesh, spirit and emotion. The ending of this movie will provide a wonderful confusion in your head, as well as help you realize that when things does change, things can turn out strange. If you can see this movie by all means, I recommend you do so. It exposes all other sex comedies of the modern world as half-a**ed smut.

DIRECTION
Alfonso Cuaron makes a wonderfully engaging story that employs scenic and underwater camera shots, gorgeous landscapes, and the one thing that binds it together: realism. He also refuses to shy away from actual sexual activity, which kind of screws him in terms of the MPAA. But more power to him, for he creates an engaging road trip, character study and full-bodied optimistic picture.

ACTING
The acting by Diego Luna and Gael Garcia is all about how well they can sell their characters as friends who are under the same kind of pressure in one journey. They never over-excel each other, but are both grounded and strong and offer as much as they can the most complex teenage sex romp one could ever find. As the movie grows, they harness the emotions of anger and uncertainty flawlessly. As good as they are, they are no match for Maribel Verdu as a seductive scene-chewer. She combines vulnerability, sass, awareness, intelligence, beauty and appeal all in one character, and successfully keeps the plot (and the whole movie) afloat. Verdu just tears into her role with all that she has, and as a result makes we want to see much more of her. And as Saba, Andres Almeida provides a few brief moments of comic relief to balance out the opening act of the movie.

MUSIC
The soundtrack includes music by Bran Van 300, Molotov vs. Dub, and Senor Coconut. For you English folk, such as me, you get Frank Zappa doing "Watermelon In Easter Hay"! And also for fans of Eagle Eye Cherry and Natalie Imbruglia, you have their songs "To Love Somebody" and "Cold Air."

VIOLENCE/GORE
A wounded body on the road…that’s all.

SEX/NUDITY
There’s several graphic sex scenes in this movie, as well as full nudity from its three starring leads (although Verdu takes a while to get her top off).

CONCLUSION
"Truth is cool but unattainable," goes one of the Charolastra mottos the boys divulge in. But as the narrator points out later, "the truth is always partial." I can’t tell you any more without giving away the whole film, so let’s give it one appropriate sum-it-up sentence: Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN is a once-in-a-lifetime film that transcends its genre limitations and builds up an honest sexual comedy well worth the trip to Heaven’s Mouth.

DVD DETAILS
This review pertains to MGM DVD release of the widescreen theatrical cut (TV-formatted 1.85:1 aspect ratio), unrated and in Spanish with optional English subtitles. The overall picture quality is often concise and proper. There is no problems with sharpness or edge enhancement, only the occasional print defect (low grain, specks), and proper color tones (though the pale hues are probably as the result of the cinematography). The audio quality in Dolby Digital 5.1 is much formatted for front channels and only the occasional ambience requires rear channels. The dialogue seemed natural and the bass channels and effects sounded excellent.

The DVD does contain plenty of extras. To kick it all off, all three boy stars (Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, Andres Almeida) engage in an effervescent audio commentary track…ENTIRELY IN SPANISH! Good luck decoding it, because I only took two years of Spanish and hardly have the vernacular and the vocabulary down. No English subtitles, though I suspect the U.K. DVD does have them. There are a trio of deleted scenes (with subtitles) that range from more footage of the stoned trio as well as an old fellow whistling. Okay…

Next up on the platter is a 13-minute short film by co-writer Carlos Cuaron, called Me La Debes. This oddly entertaining little farce I gather is about a boy trying to escape the father of his girlfriend. This is a nice supplement, as is THE MAKING OF Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN, a 22-minute production piece which gathers plenty of on-set footage and movie clips, tied together with narration (subtitle options again). Sorry, but there are no interviews here my friend.

Last of all on the special features menu is the original theatrical trailer and one TV spot. There you go. Worthy supplements for a nice feature film.