MikePadgett.com

Y Tu Mamá También

— Your mother wouldn't like it: the awkward charm of a Mexican coming-of-age drama.”

• Director: Alfonso Cuarón
• Mexico, 2001
• 

What’s odd about Y Tu Mamá También is how it can be so many things all at once: a road movie, a coming of age comedy, a sexy love story, a political critique. By way of illustration, this latter motif peppers the movie: there are soldiers and police and beggars and put-upon peasants. Somewhat oddly, however, the three characters who take us on their Mexican odyssey seem never to notice what’s out there.

The business of explanation is left to a kindly narrator whose voiceover comes right out of a Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie. He seems to encourage us not to judge Julio, Tenoch and Luisa too harshly, instead coughing up furballs of pathos that stockpile the humanity in a way two teenage bums and a broken-hearted ague could never do.

Let us make no mistake, this film is a coquettish charmer. We absolutely have to love it, because it loves life and so must we. Here the relentless positivity and positive absurdity of the youthful condition reunite us with that sense of adventure that grows harder to maintain the older we become.