Y Tu Mamá También (2001) Review: A Road Trip With Hindsight

Is Y Tu Mamá También worth watching?

Yes. Y Tu Mamá También is one of the finest coming-of-age films ever made, a sex comedy on the surface that gradually reveals itself as a portrait of friendship, class and a whole country in transition. Alfonso Cuarón balances the teenage bravado of his two heroes with a wider, sadder view of the Mexico they barely notice as they drive through it. The only real reservation is that the boys are deliberately obnoxious for long stretches, and the frank sexual content will be too much for some viewers.

What is Y Tu Mamá También about?

Y Tu Mamá También follows Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael García Bernal), two best friends from Mexico City facing an aimless summer after their girlfriends leave on a trip to Europe. At a family wedding they meet Luisa (Maribel Verdú), a Spanish woman in her late twenties married to Tenoch’s cousin, and brag to her about a secret, idyllic beach they have more or less invented. To their astonishment, Luisa takes them up on it, and the three set off by car toward the Pacific coast.

Tenoch comes from a wealthy, politically connected family and Julio from a more modest background, a difference the two friends laugh off but never quite escape. Cuarón directed from a screenplay he wrote with his brother Carlos Cuarón, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. It is a Mexican production in Spanish and runs 106 minutes.

A narrator who sees what the boys miss

The film’s masterstroke is its narration. Every so often the soundtrack drops out, and a calm, omniscient voice tells the audience something the characters do not know or do not care about: the fate of a worker glimpsed on the roadside, the history of a village they pass, the private feelings one of the boys will never say aloud. These asides turn a raucous road trip into a panorama of Mexican life, full of poverty, police checkpoints and ordinary lives unfolding at the edge of the frame.

The effect is quietly devastating. The audience keeps seeing the country with more clarity than the heroes do, which makes their jokes and rivalries feel both funnier and smaller. Few films have used voice-over so economically to widen a story’s frame without slowing it down.

Three performances with nothing held back

Luna and García Bernal, friends off-screen as well, have an easy, competitive chemistry that makes the characters’ bond instantly believable. They play Tenoch and Julio as crude, self-absorbed and funny, forever measuring themselves against each other, and both actors let insecurity show through the swagger. The film helped turn them into international names, and it is easy to see why.

Maribel Verdú gives the film its emotional depth. Luisa is at first the object of the boys’ fantasies, but Verdú slowly reveals a woman with her own reasons for making the trip, weary and reckless and fiercely alive. She keeps the character from being a mere device, and as the journey goes on, her perspective becomes the film’s centre of gravity.

Lubezki’s camera keeps the world in view

Emmanuel Lubezki’s handheld cinematography gives the film a loose, documentary texture, drifting away from the main characters to linger on passers-by, landscapes and everyday details. Long takes let conversations unfold naturally and make the car feel like a pressure cooker of jealousy and desire. The approach anticipates the immersive style Cuarón and Lubezki would push further in later work, and it keeps even the film’s most private scenes rooted in a specific place and time.

If there is a limitation, it is that the boys’ adolescent crudeness can grate before the film shows its hand. Viewers who find the early sex-comedy stretch tiresome may not stick around for the depth that follows, and it takes patience to see where Cuarón is headed.

Who should watch Y Tu Mamá También?

It is essential for anyone interested in Mexican cinema, coming-of-age stories or Cuarón’s later films. It is strictly for adults: the film contains explicit sex, nudity, drug use and constant crude language, all treated with a candour that is part of its point. At 106 minutes, it moves quickly, though its final stretch lingers in the mind long after.

For further viewing:

• Roma, Cuarón’s later, more intimate study of class and family in Mexico City.
• Amores Perros, another landmark of the new Mexican cinema of the period, also starring García Bernal.

The verdict

Y Tu Mamá También starts as a boisterous teen road movie and becomes a clear-eyed, deeply affecting film about youth, class and the passing of time. Its frankness and early crudeness will test some viewers, but its performances, narration and camera work make it one of the great films of its era.

Rating: 4.5/5