DVD
Review | Y tu mamá también
Written by: Kage
Alan
Boy, some women just can't get any satisfaction!
If ever there was a road
trip movie about a dysfunctional couple of horny teens and an older
woman
looking for meaning in her life, this is it! I missed "Y tu
mamá también"
when it was playing the art house circuit and mistakenly assumed it
was
merely a family drama revolving around somebody's mother, so imagine
my
surprise to discover what it really was. Well, it seems
audiences can never
have too many films about sex to choose from.
Seventeen-year-old brat best friends Julio (Gael García Bernal,
"Dot the I")
and Tenoch (Diego Luna, "Vampires: Los Muertos") are pretty
happy in their
lives. While they come from very different backgrounds, each has
a
girlfriend they are screwing with wild abandon, they hang out with
friends
smoking weed and ultimately have very few responsibilities. When
their women head off to Europe together for the summer and leave them
behind, the boys are on the prowl and set their sites on Tenoch's
cousin's attractive wife,
Luisa (Maribel Verdú, "Tuno Negro").
Fortunately for them, Luisa is having some extreme issues with her
philandering husband as well as some news from her doctor, so she
decides to
throw caution to the wind and accompany Julio and Tenoch to a beach
they tell her about called "Heaven's Mouth". It
doesn't really exist, of course, but
that's not the point. These guys are thinking "road
trip" with a hot babe!
The further the group heads out from the city, though, the more they
bond and
truths both beautiful and ugly start to surface culminating in a very
unusual
and sad, yet satisfying, climax. In some ways, this actually
reminds me of a
modern day adult equivalent of "Stand By Me".
Director Alfonso Cuarón has fashioned a film that captures the very
spirit of
today's youth, its sexual nature, its strengths and shortcomings and
then
played them against one possible path in life someone else has taken
as an
adult. Do the gains always measure up to the losses and are we
truly living?
These themes are explored and in a very explicit nature with a
fair amount
of nudity. While there is an "R" rated version of the
film, it is the
unrated that is the truest to what Cuarón intended. Also,
instead of opting
for a more traditional approach to filmmaking, the camera is rarely
perfectly
set up and instead follow the actors around handheld as if this was a
documentary, which adds to the reality of the piece.
MGM has released "Y tu mamá también" in as decent a
Widescreen transfer as it needs to be. This isn't slick
filmmaking here with a perfect picture. There
is grain present, but it's grain that's intended because of the style.
As
for audio, it is again as good as it needs to be too. The
subtitles for the
most part work, but there were a number of times when I don't think
they
captured enough of what was really being spoken. On the subject
of extras,
there are several included. First up is an amusing 12-minute
short film by
writer Carlos Cuarón called Me La Debes", three deleted scenes,
a fairly
insightful 22-minute "making of" with subtitles (profanity
and all), an audio
commentary that's in Spanish with no English subtitles, a TV spot and
the
theatrical trailer.
While I sat spellbound throughout the movie, what really hurts the
extras on
this edition is the lack of subtitles during the commentary. It
doesn't even
bother me that they aren't speaking in English, especially because
it's not
their native language, but I would have loved to have known what they
were
discussing and joking about. "Y tu mamá también" may
not be for everyone's
tastes, but those who appreciate foreign cinema as well as erotic
coming-of-age tales will find this extraordinary.
Film Rating:
A-
DVD Special Features: B-
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