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Y tu mamá también



Y Tu Mamá También (2001)
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Writers: Alfonso Cuarón, Carlos Cuarón
Cast: Maribel Verdú, Gael García Bernal, Daniel Giménez Cacho
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Drama

Language
: Spanish

About
: Two sex crazed teenage boys who take a road trip in Mexico with an attractive older woman and discover life along the way.

Review: Where do I start?....there's a lot I loved about this film and a lot I didn't. I'll start with the bad news first, as it's always good to end on a positive note.

The two guys Julio and Tenoch were annoying dumb asses. I felt like I was watching 14 years old. Which made the first part of the film seem like a Mexican version of Jackass The Movie...And yes, I know they're portrayed that way deliberately, so that the director can set up the last shot which shows the coming of age scene in the cafe, where they're much more mature and serious. Still, they were hyperbolic and grated on my nerves.



But when Luisa enters the picture the movie went up a notch for me. She made the film poignant and I felt for her character. Especially when she first gets the phone call from her husband and he tells her that he's cheated, she's so torn up, that you can see the pain on her face. Which later in the film is kind of odd, as she says she knew he had been cheating on her and multiple times. I guess hearing it was harder than knowing it for her, or maybe it's because she knew something that we won't know until the end. Luisa on the phone was a powerful scene and she's a fine actresses for sure.

I loved the you-are-there cinematography, as it was like we were along for the ride in the Mexican countryside. Some road trip movies short change the viewer as we don't really get to see much of the road trip, but here we get to see a lot of amazing scenes in Mexico. Which I enjoyed as it reminded me of vacations I took there.

And yea, it looked like that too, well except for all the swimming pool diving board scene, I could have done with out that.

Sometimes the voice over narration added interesting stuff like the story behind the road side cross marking an accident which involved dead chickens and fatalities. I think that was important as it showed that while the guys were goofing around, life was a serious business with death right outside of their car window. That's a theme that will come back at the end of the film too.

There's lots of little bits of life in this film that we usually don't see, like the wedding party with a horse vaquero show and the dead pedestrian that marks the start of their journey. And the pigs on the beach! I don't know why but seeing them and hearing their story was cool All those little bits tie into the theme of life and death, so the director is very skilled and created an artistic film here.

This will be a hit or miss film with movie fans.