Y Tu Mamá También **** (2001, Diego Luna, Gael García Bernal, Maribel Verdú) – Classic Movie Review 823

Sex Mex! Alfonso Cuarón’s 2001 Mexican coming of age road film Y Tu Mamá También stars Diego Luna, Gael García Bernal and Maribel Verdú.

Sex Mex! Two sex and drugs obsessed teenage Mexican boys, Tenoch Iturbide (Diego Luna) and Julio Zapata (Gael García Bernal), are thrilled when their sexy married older relative Luisa Cortés (Spanish actress Maribel Verdú) agrees to go with them on a car trip to the beach that they have named Heaven’s Mouth [La Boca del Cielo], after her husband calls her to confess that he has been unfaithful.

Luisa is the 20-something wife of Tenoch’s cousin Jano, a couple who have just moved from Spain to Mexico. Tenoch and Julio, itchy before going to college as their girlfriends are touring Europe together, meet Luisa at a lavish family wedding. To get the girl, the boys make up both the trip and the beach, and quickly make up a plan to head for a beach their buddy Saba (Andrés Almeida) suggests.

The trio gleefully set off on the road. But simmering tensions between the two close friends soon come to the surface, eventually leading to new understandings and finding the real Heaven’s Mouth beach.

Luna and Bernal give ingratiating, uninhibited performances, while the gorgeous Verdú graces this delicious, sizzling, sexy Mexican comedy drama that scored a big hit at box-offices worldwide.

With its raunchy sex scenes, nudity, drug use and near-the-knuckle talk, it is very frank indeed. And yet nevertheless it is extremely appetisingly filmed, intelligent and affecting.

Co-writer/director Alfonso Cuarón’s 2001 film, written with his brother Carlos, blows like a breath of fresh air across the cinema. Alfonso Cuarón and Carlos Cuarón were Oscar nominated in 2003 for Best Original Screenplay.

The narrator is the voice of Daniel Giménez Cacho.

Also in the cast are Ana Lôpez Mercado, Nathan Grinberg, Verônica Langer, Marîa Aura, Diana Bracho and Juan Carlos Remolina.

Y Tu Mamá También runs 106 minutes, is made by Producciones Anhelo, is released by 20th Century Fox, is shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, produced by Alfonso Cuarón and Jorge Vergara, and designed by Marc Bedia.

Though sweet, warm and in many ways innocent, the movie is R rated for strong sexual content involving teens, drug use and strong language.

Y Tu Mamá También is Spanish for And Your Mother Too.

Cuarón previously made A Little Princess and Great Expectations and went on to be the director of Children of Men (2006), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Gravity  and Roma. He has won four Oscars – including Best Achievement in Directing and Best Film Editing (shared with Mark Sanger) – for Gravity. He is the first Hispanic and Mexican to win the Academy Award for Best Director.

Cuarón has received 10 Academy Award nominations, winning four Oscars, including Best Director for Gravity and Roma, Best Film Editing for Gravity, and Best Cinematography for Roma.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 823

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