No matter what they're doing in "Y Tu Mama Tambien" - driving, eating, chasing pigs - it's always about sex.
From the opening scene (in which a kid and his girlfriend engage in strenuous, goodbye-for-the-summer coupling) to the finale (in which the characters finally look at what their erotic chitchat is really about), "Y Tu Mama" has the kind of one-track mind you might expect from a movie whose main characters are randy, bored adolescents with access to money, a car and hooch.
Boldly shot and edited, the Mexican "Y Tu Mama" (the title translates as "And Your Mother, Too") has an understated humor that comes from a narrator who enjoys taking us in areas that have little to do with the story and whose dispassionate tone suggests there's something simmering beneath the surface of the movie.
It's the story of Tenoch and Julio, who invite their new friend, Luisa, to join them on a car ride to the coast. The young men tell Luisa they live by a code that values truth above all other things but, early on, you'll guess both seem doomed not to be able to face it because they are, as the narrator says, "pieces of a puzzle that don't necessarily fit."
That makes "Y Tu Mama" sound gloomy, but it's not. Just like the young men, "Y Tu Mama" dips its hard truths in a bright candy coating. The three central characters tell each other stories and go on adventures and fight, and you've probably already guessed that the woman has sex with both men.
But what's fascinating about the movie is watching how director Alfonso Cuaron (who made the great "The Little Princess" and the underappreciated "Great Expectations") sucks you in with the colorful, lively stuff while hinting that the movie is more complicated than it seems, that it is, in fact, as complicated as sex itself.
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Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN
3 stars
Who: Directed by: Alfonso Cuaron
Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal
Rated: Not rated, but contains full-frontal nudity and tons of raw language
SHOULD YOU GO? The format is similar to "Jules and Jim" and any number of which-boy-will-the-girl-choose? movies, but the story goes deeper.
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(c) 2002, Saint Paul Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.).
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