Y Tu Mamá También

We remember scenes, not movies. - Life Through Movies #3

Lush vegetation on both sides of the dark asphalt secondary road and we're running as fast as we can.

We get to the main highway, trying to catch our breath and a taxi.
Uber didn't exist back then, and even today I highly doubt it covers that area. 
We're deep into the Oaxacan beach coast. If we don't find a way to get to the bus station in 30 minutes, we lose our expensive, 13 hour bus ride.
We're down to the last few pesos, it simply can't happen.

A few cars pass fast by us and we begin to lose hope.
Then an old Tsuru having the window down while we shout at him saves us.
"Can you give us a ride to the bus station?".
We fall into the back seat with our backpacks, and I give a complicit look to my best friend.
We got lucky, again.

We were there because of Alfonso Cuarón's Y Tu Mamá También.
There's a climatic scene where they arrive at a paradisiac beach.
Ever since we watched it as teenagers we became obsessed with visiting it.
The movie is about the ultimate road trip: two out-of-college guys go from Mexico City to the south in an old SUV. With a Spanish, 10 year older girl. Add booze and weed, what could go wrong?

A few years later, mid-college, we decided to make that trip down south. Just like the two friends in the movie, minus the girl.
We make the paradisiac, heart-shaped beach of Cacaluta one of the main stops.
Long before Oaxaca was cool, a combination of old bus rides, hitchhiking and great anecdotes got us there.

(There’s no filter, we hipsterly took my friend’s dad old camera - and you can see a bent fork we used to open the wine bottle)

How can a movie capture your imagination so deeply that it makes you do things?

Movies inform life, and then life informs movies.
It's a beautiful continuous loop that's true with pretty much every art form, the thing is that different than say, books, with movies we have an unequivocal, shared visual language.
They put us on the same page immediately.

MOVIES IN LIFE

In a broader sense, movies also align mentalities.
The movie didn’t only spark the desire to visit the beach, we also took the whole revolutionary feeling of rebelling against authority to the trip.
In one random military checkpoint to our bus in dangerous Chiapas state, I had the naive audacity of standing our ground to a soldier and telling him they shouldn’t be doing it this way.
Can’t say he surrendered to this stuck up teenager, or that I “changed Mexico”, but the whole bus clapped when we got back in again.
This I wouldn’t do today blaming the narco climate we live in, but maybe I just need to rewatch the movie.

And just like the coming-of-age theme from the movie, the trip ended up being a before-and-after not only for our friendship, but for our life.
(Come back here after you watch the movie and read this: No, not literally the same before-and-after).

MOVIES IN MOMENTS

Those feelings might be ephemeral. The scenes are permanent.

Because in the end, what we remember are scenes, not movies.

We remember scenes, not movies.

I have a friend frantically tell me about an infidelity she just found out from her boyfriend.
She asked him for specifics, what was he wearing? What did she say when they had sex?

I can only think of a scene from the same movie where one of the two friends is pacing the room like a lion trying to find out the details of an affair. What panties was she wearing? In which bed did it happen?

After my friend starts expressing the slightest justification, in a nod to one of my favorite lines ever, I say:
“No, no fue como que no quisiera. Sin querer le pica el ojo, NO se la coge”¹
She nods in agreement, I can only think of copyright.

And finally, as in the movie, every time I ask for the check at a restaurant I think of another key scene.
Every. Time.
It will probably be the case until I die.

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LOOK OUT FOR:

• Old Mexican songs are not my preferred musical style, but El Buki one in the dance scene is a big exception. "Eeeel frío de mi cuerpo pregunta por tí..."

• Cuarón’s ability to show and don't tell is amazing, even in this early film in his career. Just look at the way he conveys the different class and background from the protagonists, how can someone lifting the WC lid with his foot tell you so much?

• Besides being life-changing for me, the movie was a breakthrough in many other ways:

  • For Mexican cinema. It’s probably the most iconic example of New Mexican Cinema that would subsequently open many doors for creators

  • For the director. It would catapult Cuarón to Harry Potter and Gravity heights, and end up being the last film he shot in Mexico up until Roma, almost 20 years later

  • For the actors. The most famous contemporary male Mexican actors are the two protagonists of this film: Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna. They were pretty much unknown before the movie, and the rest is history

• Fun fact: The narrator of the movie is the protagonist from Iñárritú’s new movie Bardo, which we’ll be talking about soon ;)

Enjoy!

1. “It’s not like it wasn't intentional. He can unintentionally poke her eye, NOT fuck her”