'Y Tu Mama' Sexual Escapades and Social Critique

Author: Michael Hatch

"Y Tu Mama Tambien," written and directed by Alfonso Cuaron, is the raunchy yet touching look at the waning years of adolescence portrayed via the classic road trip, screened at Dana Auditorium on Saturday.
A pair of frantic goodbye-sex scenes opens the story and sets the theme at a teenage high-hormone pitch that holds through most of the movie. But before you get yourselves ready for a soft-porn rental, read on -- the movie has a few more layers.
During those first scenes of graceless sex we are also introduced to the narrator. As the copulating pair Ana and Tenoch make their vows of faithfulness, "I promise you I will not f-- any...," and chime together then alternatively, "Italians!" "Frenchmen!" "Brazilians!" "Chinamen!" the sound suddenly cuts out and the camera roams along with the voice of the narrator.
As the muted scene continues, we are shown how Tenoch's sexual relationship with Ana is not hindered by her middle-class psychologist father and his wife.
By this point, the camera has panned out of the bedroom, still deaf to the scene, and we explore the house with the narrator.
We move on to Julio's girlfriend's house, where the narrator informs us that the girl's father is less than thrilled by the lower middle class boy that his daughter, Cecilia, is seeing. Cecilia, along with Tenoch's girlfriend Ana, are both in the midst of packing for a summer vacation in Italy together, hence the goodbye sex.
With the pretense of finding a lost passport, Julio is finally admitted to his girlfriend's bedroom where the quick, comical sex scene transpires. On this note, the boys are left with a sexless summer to spend smoking pot, watching TV and masturbating at the country club pool on its vacant days.
This routine continues until they meet Luisa, the wife of Tenoch's unfaithful and pretentious cousin.
While drooling down her blouse at a family wedding, they tell her with idiotic charmlessness of "Heaven's Mouth," the beautiful unknown beach where they wish to take her. But she doesn't want to go, at least not until a visit to the hospital and a drunken phone call from her husband prime her.
With these two experiences in hand, she calls Tenoch, who is all too willing to give up a few days of his vapid existence to pursue the older beauty.
The two boys frantically pull together a plan and the road trip moves forward, with Tenoch, Julio, Luisa and plenty of pent up sexual energy packed up in the back of a station wagon.
As our characters traipse through their flirtations and we learn about the Charolastra manifesto -- a group of ideals for their friendship of Charolastras -- the narrator constantly cuts the sound and chimes in the realities that are occurring beyond the slim boundaries of these mildly frustrated lives.
As the road tears on, the narrator recounts small and seemingly unrelated vignettes. For example, the narrator delves into a momentary glimpse of a blue cross on the side of the road. Had we had been there exactly 10 years earlier, we would have come across a gruesome accident scene with a mother grieving over her child, surrounded by crates of bloody, maimed chicken and an overturned truck.
Or he tells us about the woman who gives Luisa a stuffed animal labeled Luisita and of the woman's granddaughter of that name who had died crossing into Arizona from Mexico years ago.
While the sexual tensions build within the frame of the road trip, we are constantly reminded of the realities of rural Mexico in contrast to the lives of these more privileged youths.
Slowly the two realities begin to intersect, and the boys, who were at the beginning filled with narrow self-absorption, are forced to actually deal with the consequences of their actions.
Fights break out, friendships are broken, drunkenly mended and then quickly and surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, made awkward again.
Throughout the movie, Luisa retains our respect and the unnamed title of heroine. She is both the most sensitive character to the realities that surround her as well as the one whose primary issues become most central to the movie.
While raunchy humor and acute social commentary on class and priorities tinge "Y Tu Mama Tambien," Luisa's story holds the plot together in this movie -- a movie well worth one's time.