Y Tu Mama Tambien

Director: Alfonso Cuaron

2001

1 July 2025

See

The title translated from Spanish means And Your Mama Too follows two best friends, Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal) who are a couple rich kids in Mexico City looking for ways to spend their summer while their girlfriends are on holiday in Europe. They meet Luisa (Maribel Verdu) Tenoch’s cousin-in-law from Spain and invite her on a road trip to a beach they’ve never been to.

Think

The real life friendship of Luna and Bernal infuses every scene with a playfulness and believability. Despite their teenage juvenility everything is honest, their horniness, comparing penises, jealousy, farting, pot and cigarette smoking and beer drinking. The best example of their bond is swimming naked and trying to see who can hold theirs longer reminds me of something I would do with my best mate, but with swimmers on and in a public pool not a country club closed for cleaning. When they do it again at a leaf strewn hotel pool on their holiday after Tenoch sleeps with Luisa, more of what's been unsaid between the two starts to come out.

Feel

And it continues to after Luisa pounces on Julio in the back seat of their car. It’s not just envy, even though each of them have slept with the other's girlfriend. But Luisa is a catalyst for them to get to know themselves and each other deeper and better. She has her own reasons I won’t get into here except to say her husband reveals to her he cheated on her while away on a trip and that’s what prompts her to join the two on their trip which they only suggested to impress her. When not in their company she cries in her hotel rooms at night, or has tearful goodbye phone calls with her ex. She shows the two best friends the way they’d like to be, and their boyish charms develop through sexual experiences with the older woman. She shows them what it takes to grow up and they try to step up. Although neither Tenoch nor Julio can do so completely on their own, yet. But the three together make for fun road trip company. The exposition of the voice over narration saying what they’re thinking and not sharing was the most insightful. Tenoch looking out the window at the town his nanny was from. The feeling in Julio’s stomach remembering walking in on his mother and godfather embracing when he sees Tenoch and Luisia first have sex. How their fishing guide will try to become a tour guide to hidden beaches but fails to compete with the hotel development on the secluded spots they find, and instead becomes a janitor there. And what becomes of them.