Y tu mamá también
天国の口、終りの楽園。
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Two teenage boys and an older woman drive to a beach that may not exist; the tenderest road-trip about mortality.
Mexico, 1999. Julio and Tenoch are seventeen, just out of high school and best friends, though Julio is middle-class and Tenoch the son of a powerful politician. With their girlfriends away in Italy for the summer, they drift through parties, dope and swimming pools. At the lavish wedding of Tenoch's sister they meet Luisa, the Spanish wife of Tenoch's cousin Jano, a woman in her late twenties. To impress her, they describe a secret, perfect beach called Boca del Cielo, Heaven's Mouth, which they have invented, and invite her along. Days later Luisa collects medical test results, and a drunken Jano phones to confess that he has been unfaithful. She calls the boys and says yes.
They drive south through rural Mexico, while a narrator steps in now and then to tell the histories and futures of the people and places they pass. Luisa laughs, quizzes the boys about their sex lives, talks about her first love, who died in a motorcycle accident, and leaves Jano a message saying she has left him. Sometimes the boys find her crying alone.
In a motel she sleeps with Tenoch: an adult with a seventeen-year-old, which the film tells as a rite of passage. Julio sees them and, hurt, tells Tenoch he has slept with Tenoch's girlfriend. The next day Luisa sleeps with Julio to even things up; Tenoch admits he has slept with Julio's girlfriend too, and the two nearly come to blows. Luisa tells them what she thinks of them, and stays only on her own terms. At the coast a fishing family takes them by boat to a beach that really is called Boca del Cielo. From a village phone Luisa says a tender, final goodbye to Jano. On the last night, drunk, the three dance and go to bed together, and the boys kiss each other. In the morning they wake side by side and cannot get home fast enough. Luisa stays behind. Their girlfriends leave them, and the friends drift apart.
A year later Julio and Tenoch run into each other in Mexico City and have coffee. Tenoch tells him that Luisa died of cancer a month after the trip, and knew it the whole time. They promise to meet again. The narrator says they never will.
Starring
Maribel Verdúas Luisa Cortés
A Spanish woman in her late twenties, married to Tenoch's cousin, who takes the boys up on their invitation to the sea.
Luisa Cortés’s story
Luisa is twenty-eight and married to Jano. At a wedding his cousin Tenoch and Tenoch's friend Julio invite her to a beach they have invented. Days later she collects medical test results, and Jano calls, drunk, to confess an affair; she says yes to the boys. On the road she laughs, talks of her first love, killed in a motorcycle accident, and leaves Jano a message that she has left him. Sometimes she cries alone. She sleeps with Tenoch, who is seventeen, then with Julio to even things up, and when they turn on each other she berates them and stays on her own terms. From a village near Boca del Cielo she says a tender goodbye to Jano. When the boys leave, she stays by the sea. A month later she dies of cancer; she had known all along.
Gael García Bernalas Julio Zapata
A middle-class seventeen-year-old just out of high school, Tenoch's best friend.
Julio Zapata’s story
Julio lives with his mother, a secretary, and his activist sister, and spends the summer after school getting stoned with Tenoch while their girlfriends are in Italy. At a wedding they invite Luisa to a beach they have made up, and she takes them at their word. When Julio sees Luisa with Tenoch, he hits back by telling Tenoch he has slept with Tenoch's girlfriend. The next day Luisa sleeps with him too, and Tenoch's own confession brings them close to blows. On the last night, drunk, the three dance and go to bed together, and Julio and Tenoch kiss. Next morning they hurry home. Their girlfriends leave them and the friendship fades. A year later, over coffee in Mexico City, Tenoch tells him Luisa has died of cancer. They promise to meet again. They never do.
Diego Lunaas Tenoch Iturbide
Julio's best friend, the seventeen-year-old son of a powerful politician, with money to spare.
Tenoch Iturbide’s story
At his sister's wedding Tenoch and Julio meet Luisa, his cousin Jano's wife, and invite her to a beach that does not exist. On the road she sleeps with him first. Julio sees them and, in revenge, tells him he has slept with Tenoch's girlfriend; Tenoch spends the night berating him and demanding details. When Luisa sleeps with Julio too, Tenoch confesses that he has slept with Julio's girlfriend, and the two nearly fight. On the last night the three go to bed together, and he and Julio kiss. Next morning he is sick and wants only to go home. A year later he runs into Julio in Mexico City, tells him that Luisa died of cancer a month after the trip and had known all along, and finds an excuse to leave. They never see each other again.
Juan Carlos Remolinaas Jano
Luisa's husband and Tenoch's cousin, whose drunken confession of infidelity sends her on the trip.
Daniel Giménez Cachoas Narrator
The unseen narrator, who tells the histories and futures of the people and places the travellers pass.
Why it matters
Y tu mamá también looks like a teenage sex comedy and turns out to be about mortality, class and a country in transition. Julio and Tenoch think the trip is about sex; Luisa, the only one who knows she is dying, is looking for a way to live the time she has left. Around them the narrator keeps opening windows onto a Mexico the boys never notice, at the end of seven decades of one-party rule. The film tells sex between a woman in her late twenties and two seventeen-year-olds as the initiation its characters feel it to be, and leaves the imbalance of age and power for the viewer to weigh; what it shows is what that summer cost the friendship. It won Best Screenplay at Venice, and in Mexico the Cuarón brothers went to court over its adults-only rating. What lingers is how little the boys understood, and how late they learned it.