Long on Allegory, Short on Critique:
Y Tu Mamá También

by Ernesto Priego

Y tu mamá también is not an easy film to watch. In a sense, one could mistake it for a Mexican teen comedy cast in road movie guise. But the most recent film written and directed by brothers Carlos and Alfonso Cuarón offers deep interpretive complexities due to the rich, almost unconsciously caricaturesque representation of Mexican cultural traits carefully embedded within its audiovisual and narrative discourse.

Y tu mamá también, described by its own authors as “a humble little piece of shit,” [1] took advantage of Amores Perros’s good commercial reputation and acclaimed filmic craftsmanship, not only because it also featured teen sensation Gael García Bernal in a main role, but because it literally followed every single smart marketing step Amores Perros director Alejandro González Iñarritu and his production team had taken. The producers of Y tu mamá también did their homework and made sure the film would pay the bills: Jorge Vergara (of Producciones Anhelo) aspired to reach wider audiences than the fairly small elite that had kept Mexican indie cinema alive in the last decade. A whole marketing package was put together: a sharp, cool promotional campaign inspired by British film design, including ads and billboards absolutely everywhere, from bus stops, metro stations and public transportation to every imaginable free space in the already-overcrowded, 20 million-plus city of Mexico; a soundtrack that included both Mexican “alternative” pop hits, some classic, international avant-garde rarities and a whole bunch of traditional, popular-yet-not-pop Mexican working class “tropical” and “romantic” music. By mixing popular, working class music (salsa, grupero) with both MTV-famous and totally unknown “alternative” bands (such as the infamous Instituto Mexicano del Sonido) in order to target the middle class, the soundtrack reflects the very same problematic clearly mirrored in the movie: the complex tensions which both arise from and perpetuate the class polarization of Mexican society.

In the name of the global market and a better box office, Y tu mamá también is a formally simple film without great narrative expectations. It is, as cinematographer Emmanuel El Chivo Lubezky put it in his first articulation of the film’s concept, “a road-movie of two guys who go to the beach, man.” Nevertheless, the film that marks Alfonso Cuarón’s return to Mexican cinema is a social commentary that, although it does not reach the level of actual critique, poses the possibility of in-depth social questioning. Like contemporary Mexican society, Y tu mamá también is a combination of oxymora, contradictions and in-your-face bipolar oppositions.

The film tells the story of Tenoch Iturbide (Diego Luna), Julio Zapata (Gael García Bernal) and Luisa Cortés (Maribel Verdú). Tenoch and Julio are two best friends finishing high school. The film emphasizes again and again the differences in social strata between the two friends: Tenoch is a rich, spoiled brat, son of a PRI government official, [2] living in the exclusive suburban residential area of San Jerónimo, southeast of Mexico City. Tenoch sees Julio as a “naquito” (a highly derogatory, classist and usually racist term used to refer to the lower classes). Julio, on the other hand, son of an electrician and a secretary, lives in a lower-middle class housing project, the ancient and gigantic Multifamiliar Juárez. Tenoch and Julio meet Luisa, Tenoch’s cousin’s Spanish wife, at an offensively ostentatious wedding, attended by the president, high government officials and la crème de la crème of the Mexican bourgeoisie. Tenoch and Julio flirt with her, and, jokingly, invite her to a trip to the beach. A couple of days later, they receive Luisa’s phone call, and the three of them begin a road trip that will change their lives forever.

This is the starting point for a filmic narrative intertwined with brief vignettes where the general sound goes off and the narrator’s voice-over (a disturbingly corny, affected Daniel Giménez Cacho) takes control of the story’s tempo and tone. The narrator does not narrate the main plot, though: he gives biographical context, inserts temporal ellipsis and describes secondary, sort of mise-en-abîme slow-mo scenes meant to give a fuller picture of contemporary urban and rural Mexico. The narrator’s mono-tonal, descriptive speech deprives Y tu mamá también’s filmic discourse of any direct ironic statement. Like the movie as a whole, the narrator uncritically describes what the viewer cannot see, without ever attempting to judge those situations, not even at the level of vocal inflection.

Y tu mamá también continually plays with the commonplace and the cliché. All the characters are social stereotypes whose features are so carefully delineated that it is almost impossible not to see them as caricatures. The same happens with the non-acting roles, “character” props such as the pesero, [3] the marcha [4] and the religious procession. By claiming to represent a general reality, simultaneously relating the main narrative of the road trip and the brief, secondary mini-stories, the Cuarón Brothers end up presenting an apparently uncritical, unconscious parody; a series of opposites which are taken for granted as an essential part of the contemporary Mexican psyche.

Y tu mamá también is, then, a blurred and confusing reflection on the dialectics between the urban and the rural, the chilango [5] and the provinciano, the rich and the poor, the conservative and the alternative, the masculine and the feminine, the cool and the uncool, lo naco and lo chido, the moral and the immoral, the heterosexual and the homosexual. Y tu mamá también is a merciless caricature of Mexico. Either that, or Mexico is itself a caricature.

The Mexico portrayed by the movie is one in which polarization is the rule. The class tensions that originally fueled the War of Independence and the Revolution have not been surpassed in this fictional universe.Significantly, the last names of all the characters are clear, almost too obvious references to famous protagonists of Mexican history: Tenoch’s last name is Iturbide, whereas Julio’s is Zapata. Their respective girlfriends are Ana Morelos and Cecilia Huerta; Tenoch and Julio’s best friend is Saba Madero, Luisa’s last name is Cortés, and Tenoch’s indigenous housemaid is Leodegaria Victoria. [6] The friendship between Tenoch and Julio is, from the very start of the film, built around the idea of antagonism and competition. It’s not a coincidence that Tenoch has Iturbide as a last name, after the general exiled in Europe and considered a traitor, and that Julio’s last name is that of the revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata, inspirational figure of the current rebel indigenous army based in Chiapas.

Y tu mamá también’s caricaturing process is painful to digest. Since the film does not seem to take a clear position on the characters and situations it describes, the irony becomes sharper, almost fierce. A scene that perfectly exemplifies this is number 38. [7] We hear a phone ringing. In a long, slow traveling shot, we see a sandwich on a plate, carried by a plumpish, middle-aged indigenous woman, Leodegaria Victoria, dressed in an impeccable black and white maid’s uniform. The phone keeps ringing. We see Leodegaria climb the huge marble stairs, panting and sweating. The phone keeps ringing. Leodegaria finally makes it to the upstairs room, where we see Tenoch, slouching in front of a gigantic TV, channel surfing, wearing a Subcomandante Marcos t-shirt, scratching his balls. The phone keeps ringing. Leodegaria lovingly hands him the sandwich. Then she picks up the phone, which, we learn, has been beside him the whole time.

The unfailing reaction to this scene in Mexican movie theaters was that of merry laughter. One wonders if we should not, rather, feel terrified at such a sight, and laugh ironically, at the characters and at ourselves.

What Y tu mamá también seems to do is present a simple, cinema verité version of a road movie. The camera rarely attempts complicated movements or exceptional montages. Neither the director nor the cinematographer or writer takes sides on their portrayal of their highly schematic characters. There is never any judgement presented in their filmic discourse, so the balance never favors any side of the drastically marked oppositions presented. The movie is so clinically neutral in its approach that it’s almost disturbing.

The Cuarón brothers’ narrative bet seems to be based on a safely ambiguous representation of the social conflicts of the Mexican lower and upper middle class. Prejudice, cliché, social convention and commonplace are not critically assessed, but, apparently, unconsciously portrayed, reflecting the mentalité of the educated upper middle class that has the resources to write, direct and star in Mexican film.

Clearly not a work of social realism,Y tu mamá también is also not a road movie as we know them. It belongs to a different batch, perhaps closer to Stranger than Paradise, Paris Texas and My Own Private Idaho. The commonplace allegory of the physical journey as a rite of passage is so obvious that it becomes clear there’s an attempt to turn an otherwise unsubstantial story into a sad tale of lost friendships and things past. Even though the story seems to desperately try to escape teen comedy standards by forcedly unknotting the plot with a final tragic event, the film is unable to achieve a poetic sense, and provides only corny soap opera sentimentalism when attempting to deal with supposedly “deep” notions.

It is not surprising that the name of Mexican writer José Agustín appears in the acknowledgements. [8] One of the film’s most obvious positive aspects is the use of colloquial, almost untranslatable chilango idioms, freeing Mexican cinema from its pre-Amores perros overall conservative dialogical clumsiness. However, the freshness and spontaneity of the acting and fluency of the dialogue do not achieve the hardcore, almost camp documentary feeling of, say, Gummo, Kids or Storytelling.

Y tu mamá tambiénis a film that deserves more critical attention and less laudatory exercises in signed press releases. It’s a film that poses interesting, even dangerous questions regarding Mexican idiosyncrasy. The camera is never innocent, even if its marketing-intoxicated authors would like to think so. The Cuarón brothers’ achievement is presenting “a humble little piece of shit” that could either stink and pollute or organically reintegrate itself to the ground it came from, nurturing the future for more critical films that may have the courage to transcend simple social commentary in order to finally reach social critique.

Ernesto Priego is a cultural critic and literature professor based in Mexico City.

---