Y Tu Mama Tambien

This coming-of-age movie, co-written by director Alfonso Cuarón with his brother Carlos, was a much-loved and critically-lauded indie hit although it's not entirely clear to me why. Narratively it adheres to the post-adolescent road trip genre teaming up a couple of good-looking, witless party dudes (Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal) with a gorgeous, sexually-frustrated 30-something woman on the lam from her unfaithful husband. Like yeah, sure.

Had Hollywood done this, the result would be predictably awful, but here it is dignified with a philosophico-cultural spin courtesy of an intermittent narration from the director, some adult dramatics, largely justified in hindsight, thanks to the very fetching Maribel Verdú and some nice photography courtesy of Emmanuel Lubezki (who also shot Cuaron's previous films as a studio director in the US, A Little Princess, 1995, and Great Expectations,1998).

A post-adolescent road trip movie it remains, however. So credit to Cuarón for bringing some depth to what is constitutively an escapist genre but above all for creating a film which enables its audience to see in it much more than there is on the screen.

 

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