Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN (2001) | Dir: Alfonso Cuaron | Is Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN actually queer? I say it is. A coming-of-age tale about two teenage friends — Julio (Gael García Bernal) and Tenoch (Diego Luna) — who take a road trip with an older woman Luisa (Maribel Verdú), the wife of Tenoch’s loutish cousin. Ostensibly on a quest to find a fictional beach called Heaven’s Mouth, the friends find themselves in constant friction: sexual, political, physical, emotional. And Luisa has a hidden agenda of her own which I will not reveal here for those who have never seen it. Cuaron’s film perfectly captures the gritty, obnoxious, hormonal truth about being a teenager, while also providing moments of tenderness and growth, often captured in a moment of revelation in close-up. I’d never seen male/male friendship depicted with such honesty, especially about the real sexual tension and experimentation that seems to be ubiquitous, at least in my friend circles and certainly for younger generations. It’s simply Not A Big Deal Anymore. Which is a good thing. But it wasn’t always this way, and one of the truths the film exposes is the competitiveness between males that can destroy. Some call it toxic masculinity. The characters are archetypes and there’s some heavy-handed socio-political themes that emerge, but ultimately this is a story about friendship and the boundaries that get crossed and the lines that get blurred when genuine love is also a part of the landscape.
