Of Alfonso Cuarón’s non-blockbuster, non-franchise pictures, Y Tu Mamá También is the one I think I like the most. I haven’t seen Children of Men in quite some time, and I haven’t revisited Roma since its release – a movie I admire far, far more than I actually go to bat for – but what Cuarón crafts here doesn’t strain for something it’s not. It’s a tender, small-scale picture about how, at the end of the day, we’re all basically ants in this huge world, and how the only real wisdom available to us is to savor the fleeting moments as people come and go and as you get older. It sneaks up on you.
In the closest foreign language film to Call Me By Your Name that I’ve seen, Cuarón’s breakout international hit trails Tenoch and Julio – a very young Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal, respectively – on a road trip with Luisa (Maribel Verdú), the wife of Tenoch’s older cousin. Both guys have girlfriends, but their significant others are off on their own trip in Italy, a detail Luisa is quick to weaponize by suggesting the two gals are having their own nightly escapades with different men across the Atlantic. What follows is a sex comedy of sorts – with a much more sincere and dramatic undertone running beneath the surface the entire time – between Julio, Tenoch, and Luisa navigating something none of them are entirely equipped for.
All of this is set against the backdrop of 1999 Mexican political turmoil, imbued with narration from Daniel Giménez Cacho that thankfully never overstays its welcome. It doles out backstory in just the right amounts at just the right moments, even deep into the third act as both Tenoch and Julio are nudged – reluctantly, painfully – into growing up ever so slightly. The formidable relationships of their teens that once felt so invincible begin to crack under the weight of reality setting in, and Cuarón lets that happen quietly and without ceremony.
Above all else, he doesn’t overdirect this. It’s boots on the ground, low budget filmmaking that feels so intimate and naked compared to just how controlled his later work would become. I chuckled a little thinking about Cuarón jumping from directing this to Prisoner of Azkaban just a few years later. The talent is obviously there – it’s all over every frame of Y Tu Mamá También – but the reigning in of something this sweaty and openly horny into the world of Harry Potter is not a translation I would’ve predicted working as well as it does.
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Cuarón has always been a filmmaker I’ve felt a degree of emotional distance from, and I won’t pretend that’s fully resolved here. But it helps to see the film that catapulted him to international acclaim and understand exactly why it did. It digs a bit deeper than his blockbuster fare and a bit more humanly than his recent high-art output. Smaller by his current standards, but richer for it. And yeah – maybe it’s time to give Children of Men another shot.
Score: 8/10
Y tu mamá también (2001)
- Cast: Maribel Verdú, Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, Daniel Giménez Cacho
- Director: Alfonso Cuarón
- Genre: Comedy, Romance, Drama
- Runtime: 106 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: March 15, 2002
- Movies Like Y Tu Mamá También: Anora, Poor Things, All of Us Strangers
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