Alfonso Cuaron's And Your Mom Too is a movie about two teenage assholes who go on a road trip with an older woman for the express purpose of having sex with her. What keeps the movie from being 80's John Hughes film is are the facts that: A) the movie is aware the teenagers are obnoxious, B) it knows that one will one day they will mature and not be obnoxious, C) their actions have realistic consequences and D) the woman is a complete character herself and not a fantasy figure.
The two teenagers are best friends named Tenoch (Diago Luna) and Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal). Both are fairly ordinary except for one thing- Tenoch was born into a very powerful and wealthy family (so powerful a family wedding is attended by the President of Mexico). This means the two have unlimited access to money, and therefore drugs and alcohol. They find it amusing to yell parts of the female body loudly in public and are often rude to others. They are not malevolent, but the drugs and alcohol combined with arrogance of youth is a bad combination. On the summer of their senior year of high school their girlfriends study abroad in Italy, leaving them open to "explore". Enter Luisa (Maribel Verdu), an attractive woman in her late twenties who has just been dumped by her boyfriend. Julio and Tenoch half jokingly ask her to go on a road trip with them, and are shocked when she accepts. It will not take a PhD in screenwriting to figure out they will be changed by the trip, but what I liked was that they did not so much learn a Very Important Lesson as much as basic facts about the world, such as that it does not revolve around them.
Take their attitude towards sex, which might be summed up as the more, the better. They succeed in their effort to have a lot of it, but find that ideas that sex can truly be casual is changed when they find out their girlfriends cheated on them. They feel no remorse when they sleep around, but are deeply hurt when they are on the opposite end of the spectrum. There is no romance, no passion, nor even much fun in their sexual encounters- it's the fulfillment of a biological need and not much more.
They are also oblivious to the plight of the many poor people they pass along the way, as well as the political upheaval spreading through Mexico. At one point, a blue collar family allows them to stay with in their hotel cheaply and access to their boat, and no one even bothers a thank you. Of course, lots and lots of teenagers are like this. I knew many. The fact that I never was one doesn't mean that I can't tell that Cuaron is dead on in his portrayal of the male hedonism mindset. At the end, they also learn something startling about their attitudes towards women- if they only see them as sex objects, love must come from somewhere else.
The DVD I rented is missing four minuets of a key scene towards the end that was cut to give the film an "R" rating. Unlike the cuts in Requiem for a Dream, these actually affect the movie's theme and the story itself. My group did not fully understand what happened until I read a summary after the film was movie. This kind of censorship is ridiculous- this movie should only exist in its original version. It is not sensationalistic, exploitive or aside from a brief scene where Luisa sunbathes naked, erotic. The presents sex as its characters see it, cold and empty. The movie sends a message that is deeply needed in today's instant gratification culture. At the very end of the film, after the epilogue, the friends have come to a conclusion that perhaps responsibility and sensitively are actually good things that can actually make you happier, and perhaps sex is more meaningful if is motivated by something other than testosterone.
Y Tu Mamá También (2001)