- Director: Alfonso Cuaron
- Year: 2001
- Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Maribel Verdu, Diego Luna
Prima facie, Y Tu Mama Tambien is an erotically charged story of a road trip. Best friends Tenoch and Julio are brash teenagers poking their middle fingers at Mexico city’s reality. In their dope-addled world, only fun and girls matter (the matter-of-fact narrative voice, so redolent of Jules et Jim, shows them—and others—up mercilessly). The summer stretches beyond them in a warm haze of boredom. A hurriedly rigged up road trip to the ‘heaven’s mouth’ beach with the older, sensual, unhappy and gorgeous Luisa opens up possibilities, and the interiors of a country the boys scarcely know. As the worlds of Luisa, Tenoch and Julio collide and confidences are shared over miles and spliffs, the gulf between the Europeanised Latin elite and the indigenous natives becomes clearer. Cuaron’s movie is as much about the thrills of carefree youth, sexual discovery and nifty whiffs of the Mexican countryside as about the separate worlds of the haves and the have-littles. State repression is driven by breezily as the three discuss sexual techniques. It is also about the still waters of emotional stress that lie beneath rambunctious cooldom—brought to life with unhindered abandon by Bernal and Luna.
