A long time ago--probably right after seeing Fast Times at Ridgemont High for the first time--I was inspired to coin the phrase Trashy Teenage Sex Comedy (TTSC) to denote a particular genre of film. Through the years, it’s remained a useful tag, because it’s remained a perennially viable genre. As in any genre, there are good examples (Risky Business and the already mentioned Fast Times) and bad ones (most of the others), and then occasionally one that uses the genre foundation as a springboard to something far less conventional. Y Tu Mamá También is one of those.
Y Tu Mamá También is a TTSC inasmuch as two of the main characters, Tenoch and Julio, are teenage boys who spend most of their energy thinking about, talking about, looking for and sometimes even having sex. At their age, in their world of relative privilege (they are from well-to-do families in Mexico), there is nothing else that is even remotely interesting to them. They make crude jokes (the title is Spanish for “and your Mama, too”--you may invent your own setup to that punchline), and they brag about their sexual prowess, and when their girlfriends are around, they spend most of their time in bed with them.
As it turns out, their girlfriends aren’t around for most of the picture, which begins as the girls leave to spend the summer in Europe. The boys settle in for a summer of boredom and frustration. But then a miraculous opportunity presents itself: Tenoch and Julio somehow (they don’t know how, but we do) persuade Luisa, the wife of some obscure relative, who also happens to be a beautiful woman about ten years older than them, to join them for a road trip to distant, perhaps imaginary beach. Uh huh. Anyone who has ever been or ever known a teenage boy can readily imagine the hormonal tsunami that is crashing into our drooling young friends as they begin their journey.
On the road is where the movie takes flight. Luisa, in addition to being beautiful and sexy, knows a thing or two about how stupid teenage boys are about sex (and pretty much everything else), and undertakes a program of teasing, embarrassing, testing, confusing, flirting with, lecturing and otherwise tormenting Tenoch and Julio in the hopes of smartening them up about life and love and what matters and what doesn’t. Admittedly, the standard stuff of a “coming-of-age film.” But the frankness and humor with which it’s pulled off here is in itself enough to make the movie well worth seeing.
Happily, though, Y Tu Mamá doesn’t stop there. As the characters drive through the Mexican countryside, the desert roads, the small towns and fishing villages, they (and we along with them) discover not only the varied beauty of the country, but also its sometimes alarming poverty. They are not used to facing the reality of poverty any more than most of us are, and it can be a sobering experience. Even more arresting is the film’s habit of going silent in the middle of a scene to allow for a voiceover describing the history of an incidental character or place, the details of an event that has already passed or is yet to come, or some unseen aspect of a character’s life. These voiceovers are concise yet lyrical, and if we don’t always understand exactly how they relate to the action at hand, the resonance they bring to the story is palpable by the end. Like the confrontation with poverty, the voiceovers are small points of connection that help to position these characters and their story, however tenuously, within the much larger, richer story of the life of a people. The movie doesn’t ultimately make grand statements about this; it just recognizes and appreciates the fullness of life, even when the day’s events might seem inconsequential.
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©2002 dondi demarco