This movie is less about sex among teen-age boys than it is about Mexico. As Maribel Verdu, in the role of Luisa Cortes, tells the boys near the end of the movie, "You should be glad you're Mexicans! You should be glad to live in Mexico!" To which the boys whimsically agree with a bizarre, tequila-soaked toast to "Mexico, magical, musical!" The boys themselves enjoy that rare thing in Mexico: a middle-class lifestyle, even though they are actually the "aristocrats" of that country, attending fancy weddings and spending substantial sums of pesos on marijuana, beer, and road trips.
The road trip which comprises most of the movie's action is a two-day sojourn through the countryside, beginning in Mexico City and ending somewhere on the Pacific coast. Film makers Alfonso and Carlos Cuaron (Alfonso directed it) want very much to show Mexico as a quaint but non-threatening place, interspersed with convenient motels, friendly restaurants, and the odd roadblock set up by the Mexican military. But the road is always clear for adventure, for "imporant" life experiences, and most importantly for sequences that resemble so many American-made "coming-of-age" movies, of which "Y Tu Mama Tambien" is often a replica. "See?" the Cuaron Brothers seem to say, "we Mexicans are no different from you norteamericanos!" They are completely wrong, of course. But that's what makes this movie interesting. Nobody in this movie suffers from that particular North American trait borne of Northern European Protestantism: guilt that derives from failure to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Nobody in this movie has a sense of anyone or anything outside themselves; they live with passion for the moment, they fly into rages when it suits them, and sex is no different from any other kind of activity, though it does have the potential to get males and females worked up about each other. Such treatments make this movie so Mexican: it's still very much the Third World down there, even if there are cars, fancy houses, and even paved highways.
The road trip which comprises most of the movie's action is a two-day sojourn through the countryside, beginning in Mexico City and ending somewhere on the Pacific coast. Film makers Alfonso and Carlos Cuaron (Alfonso directed it) want very much to show Mexico as a quaint but non-threatening place, interspersed with convenient motels, friendly restaurants, and the odd roadblock set up by the Mexican military. But the road is always clear for adventure, for "imporant" life experiences, and most importantly for sequences that resemble so many American-made "coming-of-age" movies, of which "Y Tu Mama Tambien" is often a replica. "See?" the Cuaron Brothers seem to say, "we Mexicans are no different from you norteamericanos!" They are completely wrong, of course. But that's what makes this movie interesting. Nobody in this movie suffers from that particular North American trait borne of Northern European Protestantism: guilt that derives from failure to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Nobody in this movie has a sense of anyone or anything outside themselves; they live with passion for the moment, they fly into rages when it suits them, and sex is no different from any other kind of activity, though it does have the potential to get males and females worked up about each other. Such treatments make this movie so Mexican: it's still very much the Third World down there, even if there are cars, fancy houses, and even paved highways.