Main cast: Maribel Verdú (Luisa Cortés), Gael García Bernal (Julio Zapata), and Diego Luna (Tenoch Iturbide)
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Y Tu Mamá También, you bloody American film critics, yeah, and tu you too. “Sexually honest”, huh? Sexually honest my bum, all of you critics are just getting off on the idea of a hot mama bonking two 16-year old horny toads.
In fact, I noticed now how most reviews of this movie, invariably written by a male, have some subtle hints that they find this movie just like their, ahem, misspent youth. Now, I know you guys love to imagine that that hot widow down the street corrupted you when you were a hairless, high-pitched brat, but please, no wanking at my expense, you sorry buggers you.
Seriously, this movie? What is it about Spanish-language movies that put in some throwaway “political statements” (“That woman I spent the weekend shagging is a hot Opposition leader, woo-hoo!”) as some pretense to flash penises, breasts, and well-shaved crotches? Y Tu Mamá También is basically about two 16-year old horny toads, who talk and act like horny, drunkard morons, yet they inexplicably get all the chicks, who embark on a “soul searching” road trip with a dying woman, Tenoch’s aunt.
Luisa will sleep with both of them, and I want to bang my head against the wall. Tenoch and Julio are two of the ugliest, most irritating teenagers I have ever encountered in a movie, devoid of any charisma whatsoever, unless you have a fascination for sparsely-pube’d penises and young twink flesh devoid of any body hair except at the crotch.
So yeah, so now heaving pumping buttocks and threesome actions are “sexually honest”. Fucking your way to the hilt is the key to male enlightenment – note that the woman who fucks her way to the hilt is in the end punished for giving the men their nirvana. Every other Spanish-language movie I’ve watched follow this tired formula – fuck for your inner Buddha, boys! – and to call Y Tu Mamá También a “masterpiece of a sexual coming of age movie” is a sure sign that you need to watch more honest porn more often. At least porn doesn’t put in sad scenes of hungry peasants to pass itself off as a “serious movie”.
Not that this movie is all porn. The most explicit scene is probably the last one, where the boys grill spit Luisa and then, well, do something that the movie blatantly hints on early (so there’s no suspense there – talk about premature ejaculation, really). In the end, this is a story about a woman who doesn’t follow her advice (“You play with babies and you end up cleaning their diapers”) and two boys who could use a Gay Day parade in their lives.
Okay, I’ll be fair. The best thing about this movie is Luisa. Played by Maribel Verdú who is actually really beautiful in a more waifish way, she displays the most depths here. But in the end, this is yet another movie that claims to worship woman but instead chooses to subject this woman to a sterile sexless existence and then punishes her brutally when she decides to let loose and have sex. This nullifies everything good about Maribel Verdú’s performance. Luisa is another stereotypical Madonna/whore symbol with no in-between.
Maybe you can argue that this is a Mexican/Latin chauvinist thing. If that’s the case, well, buster, go watch porn, it’s much better, and there’s much more action – you don’t have to fast forward the boring pretentious parts like you did in this movie.
Oh, one more thing: Gael García Bernal looks ancient, like a wrinkled prune, and if his Julio is 16, I’m 28.
