Movie Review: Y Tu Mama Tambien

It's a curious state we live in here, a country sans an identity. I read, recently, about how Barbara Walters mentioned her discomfort with a woman breast-feeding her baby on an airplane next to her and how, when she landed, "lactivists" picketed her office at ABC in New York. This would be the same nation that got upset of Janet Jackson's flashing of her breast during the Super Bowl.

Um, what is it we want?

I'd heard two different reviews of this movie going in. Some really recommended it, saying it was an exploration of sexuality and some panning it, saying it was a stoner road movie.

And like our confused nation, I'm going to add to the problem. I agree to both.

I think the reasons some people put this movie down is because, sadly, they think like Americans. Since joining Netflix last year, I have seen more foreign films they I thought was possible. Before, I had only been exposed to England's cinema and France. Now I've been to India, Japan, China, Brazil, Italy, Greece and Russia. And with each film has opened up a horizon. I could see a world that was so like our own and yet, so vastly different on a fundamental level. Americans, ever scared of sex and sexuality (see a nation that wants equality for all--except those with sexual differences/the breast issue listed above) will see a stoner sex movie.

They will see two boys, lost in a world of falsivity, get stoned and pork everything in sight and it's wrong.

But if you pull back a little, and see this is something a bit more. Two boys, on their way into college and process of becoming men, exploring sex and all its facets. Americans would be and will be put off by the frankness of the images this movie portrays-and give it a negative rating. I, too, found I occasionally had to gasp.

But upon further meditation, I realized that the director, who went on to create the best of the Potter films (so far) had a huge grasp of the young men in this picture and no fear of showing that.

I don't believe a picture like this could have been made in America. Americans still haven't ironed out their issues with sex like the Old World has. Americans would have made the same movie but had the lads go on a killing spree instead of a sexual exploration. I hear that the current movie, Mr. And Mrs Smith is doing just that. Instead of illustrating a couple who lacks intimacy, they supplant it with the two doing violence to one another and everything they own.

How American, no?

The plot concerns these two boys, about to go off to college and the summer prior. They meet a beautiful woman and take her on the road to the beach. The plot is merely a device, illustrated by novice writers and a novice director, to have interactions of these characters. But the strength of the movie is it's bluntness, it's directness of it's presentation.

The same bluntness and directness that would scare off the average American.

But it is a novice film and this is where I hedge. The script has some glaring cliches I've seen in other movies. Of course the young lady's husband has an affair, giving her movitavtion to move on with these young men. Of course the car breaks down to give them time to be in one place and experience each other.

And when the film breaks away from the cliche--it's never fully realized or explored. The young mens (spoiler alert) kiss each other one night AND THAT'S IT?

The woman, we find, has been dying all along. Why didn't we learn eariler? These are great departures and neither the director or writer use them to what they could. Therein lies the drawback and why I only give this movie a partial vote.

But I'll err on the side of recommendation. I think a person should watch this movie and then discuss with themselves/others what it is that bothered them and if they liked it or not. I think it would be very telling in many ways.