Y Tu Mama Tambien

Having been born in one country, and raised in another, I’ve been exposed to an interracial upbringing that has made me fascinated with culture and the differences between people’s various ways of life. “Y Tu Mama Tambien(2001)” is the tale of two coming of age teenage boys from Mexico City, and their impulsive journey with an older woman that involves sexual discoveries. Beneath the carefree road trip plot, lie many profound meanings. It takes a look at two very different sides of Mexican culture and deals with topics such as the fragility of life, and the finality of death. 

If I were to teach a class on modern day Mexican society, the film would be my number one tool. Director and writer of the film, Alfonso Cuaron, captured the essence of what it means to live in Mexico. Not only was the dialogue and acting of the film firmly realistic of how people think and interact, but it also maintained a dreamlike quality through the use of a narrator, who randomly let the audience in on what seem to be “irrelevant” insight to the past, the present, and even the future.

The main plot of the film is laid out quickly: Tenoch(Diego Luna) and Julio(Gael Garcia), who are two best friends respectively from the upper and lower classes, are free for the summer when their girlfriend’s go to Europe. At a wedding they meet Luisa(Maribel Verdu), the wife of a distant cousin who is 10 years older; she is sexy and playful. The young men jokingly suggest a weekend trip to the legendary beach “El Boca del Cielo,” or “Heaven’s Mouth.” When her husband cheats on her, she unexpectedly agrees, and they all set out together on a road-trip.

The main plot provides the surface arc of the movie. Next to it, Cuaron portrays a parallel world, the Mexico they are driving through. They pass police checkpoints, encounter drug busts and traffic accidents, drive past small villages, and are stopped at a roadblock of flowers by villagers demanding a donation for their “queen,” a girl in her celebratory sweet 16 dress. “You are a beautiful queen,” Luisa tells them, but the roadblock is simply and example of the kind of extortion that plagues the country. 

My sophomore year of college, I studied in Mexico for a semester and took a weekend trip to the same beach that is used in the film, which is actually named “La Cacaluta,” and was utterly amazed at the level of authenticity Cuaron achieved with the film. He stays true to even the smallest details of the actual form of life the people of the region experience. These smaller characters are used to subtly address bigger issues of the time. When they arrived at the beach they were greeted by a fisherman and his family, who had lived there for generations selling fish. The narrator then informed the audience the beach will be purchased for a tourist hotel. The fisherman was forced to abandon his way of life to search for a job in the city, but eventually returned to work as a janitor.

At times of narration, the soundtrack goes silent and the narrator comments from outside of the action: pointing out the village where Tenoch’s nanny was born and left at 13 to seek out work. Or a stretch of road where two years earlier, there was a deadly accident. The narration and images are a reminder that in Mexico, and in many other countries, a prosperous economy has left an uneducated and penniless peasantry behind.

My favorite aspect of the film is how the actors and Cuaron portray the triangular relationships between the three main characters. Luisa would taunt the boys about their inexperienced sex lives in a lighthearted but tenacious manner, probing them until they had few secrets left, while simultaneously teasing them with erotic possibilities. Luisa genuinely took interest in how the boys viewed women and relationships and decided to teach them a few things. On the surface, we see hilariously awkward but painfully honest sexual encounters between the three characters, but the underlying lesson the Luisa is trying to get across to the boys is that men and women learn to share sex as a treasure they must carry together, that women are not prizes, conquests or targets, but the other half of a sacred unity. The movie is realistic about sex, which I thought was a very frank and healthy way to view it.

Digging deeper, beneath to coming of age journey and the portrayal of the two sides of Mexico, we find a third level of profoundness. There are only two shots in the film that truly reflect Luisa’s inner reality, so it came as a huge surprise when Luisa dies of cancer only a month after the trip is over. When I thought back through the film I realized that Cuaron’s goal is to force the audience not to just focus on what is in front of them, but also to take notice of what is going on around them as well. He makes me want to appreciate all that surrounds me, especially when I don’t think I’m being affected directly. We would all be surprised to find how deeply our lives are connected to the people and places that surround us every day.

The key performance is by Maribel Verdu as Luisa. She is the engine that drives every scene she’s in. In a sense she fills the standard role of the sexy older woman, but her character is so much more than that: wiser, sexier, more complex, happier, and sadder. It is true that some critics have observed that “Y Tu Mama Tambien” is one of those movies where “after that summer, nothing would ever be the same.” Yes, but it redefines nothing.