It Always Goes By Too Quickly...

How is THIS going to work? A complicated situation in Alfonso Cuaron's Y Tu Mama Tambien.

It’s a movie about teens who drink, smoke up, and try to have sex with anything that moves. We've seen this all before, right?

The thing is, every frame of Y Tu Mama Tambien is filled with a real melancholy that few films are able to evoke. You can feel that these "glory days" of youth are slipping away forever, as youth tends to do, and no matter how much time you spend trying to hang onto them, the world will continue to move along without you.

The two leads play teenage boys who are charming and charismatic despite their selfish and obnoxious behaviour (amazing performances by Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna), as they con an attractive older lady (Ana Lopez Mercado) into joining them on a road trip to a beach that they invent just to impress her. Of course, male hormones dictate that along the way the two boys are going to try to have sex with her. Undoubtedly, the older and wiser woman will somehow turn the tables on these two arrogant specimens.

However, the film transcends the “teen road movie” genre by taking a huge step back from its own subject matter. The movie runs along normally, with two people conversing back and forth for example, when all of a sudden the soundtrack cuts off and everything goes silent. An omniscient narrator then cuts in to describe, calmly and logically, the histories of certain characters, previous events that have happened at the Mexican locations seen in the film, or even matter-of-fact glimpses into the future of certain characters or situations. This narration, combined with a camera that sometimes lifts up with a mind of its own to roam around a particular setting, give the actual main plot of the film a feeling of triviality and insignificance compared to the innumerable stories in the country of Mexico where it all takes place.

Don’t let the unabashedly explicit sex turn you off (for some it may even be a selling point!), Y Tu Mama Tambien is a moving look at friendships that can never last, road trips that you never want to end, and good times that slip through your fingers the more tightly you try to hold on.