"Y tu mamá también" broke me - A beautiful film

Mexican Alfonso Cuarón is probably one of the most important (and versatile) filmmakers of today, something that is evident if we review his filmography full of gems like Gravity, the divisive Roma, and, obviously, the best film within the entire Harry Potter franchise: The prisoner of Azkaban.

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Although I had heard of "y tú mamá también" on several occasions, generally mentioned as one of the best films ever created (something I doubted, I admit), I had never taken the time to give it a chance, and I really regret it.

And the 2001 film starring Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal (currently considered the biggest stars in all of Hollywood) is simply brilliant, not only in terms of acting and narrative, but also for the way it is directed, resulting in an intimate and nostalgic work that transports us to a very specific time in Mexican history, but at the same time has the ability to make us identify with what it shows.

It can be defined as a roadtrip movie with hints of drama and comedy where we follow two young men with slightly different socioeconomic backgrounds who, after meeting a young Spanish woman a couple of years older than them who seems to be going through a personal crisis, unexpectedly decide to join them in order to visit a beach called "La boca del cielo".

The thing about "Y tu mamá también" is that, like other films like Roma (where Cuarón employs many of the same camera tricks, only much more refined and slower), this is nothing more than a pretext to immerse us and make us complicit in the lives of its protagonists, while celebrating Mexican culture (and its people) in a way that never comes off as overly intrusive.

"Y tu mamá también" is crude and vulgar, but each moment of this nature has a clear purpose and serves to reinforce a point. It talks about friendship, sex, and how lived experiences can fundamentally change who we are for better or worse. It is hedonistic and irreverent but comes from a very honest place.

While we have a clear plot and several characters who must go through a traditional narrative arc, I like how a good portion of the footage is not used to advance the plot but simply to make us share with Tenoch, Julio and Luisa. It is organic, funny and very moving.

This score was taken from my Letterboxd account.