723 Y tu mamá también

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swo17
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723 Y tu mamá también

#1 Post by swo17 » Thu May 15, 2014 4:52 pm

Y tu mamá también

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The smash road comedy from the Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón is that rare movie to combine raunchy subject matter and emotional warmth. Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna shot to international stardom as a pair of horny Mexico City teenagers from different classes who, after their girlfriends jet off to Italy for the summer, are bewitched by a gorgeous older Spanish woman (Maribel Verdú) they meet at a wedding. When she agrees to accompany them on a trip to a faraway beach, the three form an increasingly intense and sensual alliance that ultimately strips them both physically and emotionally bare. Shot with elegance and dexterity by the great Emmanuel Lubezki, Y tu mamá también is a funny and moving look at human desire.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED EDITION:

• New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki and approved by director Alfonso Cuarón, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
On "Y tu mamá también": Then and On "Y tu mamá también": Now, two new pieces on the making of the film, featuring interviews with actors Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, and Maribel Verdú; Cuarón; cowriter Carlos Cuarón; and Lubezki
• New interview with philosopher Slavoj Žižek about the film
• On-set documentary from 2001
• Deleted scenes
You Owe Me One (2002), a short film by Carlos Cuarón
• Trailers
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Charles Taylor and character biographies by Carlos Cuarón

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domino harvey
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#2 Post by domino harvey » Thu May 15, 2014 4:53 pm

Which had a longer waiting period, this or the Gorin box?

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domino harvey
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#3 Post by domino harvey » Thu May 15, 2014 4:56 pm

New interview with philosopher Slavoj Žižek about the film
Awesome, I can't wait to see this. I definitely can wait to read all the bitching about him being included in the extras!

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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#4 Post by bamwc2 » Thu May 15, 2014 5:06 pm

domino harvey wrote:
New interview with philosopher Slavoj Žižek about the film
Awesome, I can't wait to see this. I definitely can wait to read all the bitching about him being included in the extras!
I was just about to ask whether Criterion could produce a special special edition with 100% less Žižek! I'd pay double for it!

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knives
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#5 Post by knives » Thu May 15, 2014 5:12 pm

I figure we all can just take a lesson from his book and not watch while saying we did.

criterion10

Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#6 Post by criterion10 » Thu May 15, 2014 5:35 pm

Pretty ironic that the cover isn't even up for this one yet. Nevertheless, this will encourage me to finally watch the film in its entirety (I think I only saw parts of it a few months ago).

felipe
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#7 Post by felipe » Thu May 15, 2014 5:59 pm

criterion10 wrote:Pretty ironic that the cover isn't even up for this one yet.
Four years and they didn't have time to finish up the cover...

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colinr0380
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#8 Post by colinr0380 » Thu May 15, 2014 6:10 pm

At least it is here, finally. It's a wonderful film that merges the single-minded horny teen sex comedy genre with a surprisingly deep over-layering of socio-political commentary (which is presumably why Žižek is in there!) and some surprisingly moving relationship dramas, the jarring clashing between all of these worlds existing in (wilful?) ignorance of each other despite being so close together being the key theme of the film. I'll probably have to keep my UK DVD for the commentary with Bernal and Luna, though you're not missing too much if you haven't listened to it (they just keep up the juvenile larking about that their characters do in the film!)

On a similar note, try to ignore the vigorous humping in the foreground of the very first scene and note the 'older woman love story' prefiguring big poster of Harold and Maude on the wall in the background!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Thu May 15, 2014 6:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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FakeBonanza
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#9 Post by FakeBonanza » Thu May 15, 2014 6:28 pm

criterion10 wrote:Pretty ironic that the cover isn't even up for this one yet. Nevertheless, this will encourage me to finally watch the film in its entirety (I think I only saw parts of it a few months ago).
I think I may have subconsciously delayed seeing this, waiting for the Criterion. I've ended up waiting far longer than I intended to, but it's a certain blind buy for me.

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chatterjees
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#10 Post by chatterjees » Thu May 15, 2014 6:59 pm

"Comedy"? I have watched this film twice, never thought it belongs to the comedy genre!

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colinr0380
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#11 Post by colinr0380 » Thu May 15, 2014 7:10 pm

It is certainly raising the spectres of the teen sex comedy and road trip genre even if it broadens out from only being about that to something in the vein of Rohmer (interestingly leaving the male leads relatively blinkered in their attitudes, their trip a kind of romantic, sexy, almost too good to be true idealised holiday and the perfect way to lose your innocence, but also perhaps in the end just another emotionally charged story for another narrator to describe as a background to someone else's road trip, while the audience gets the full impact on all levels) - my contention is that Y tu mamá también and something like American Pie both begin in similar territory, they just diverge in what they then do in and with that territory. If during American Pie you saw the lead up on the countertop humping away and suddenly a voiceover started telling you about the minimum wage serf employed long hours in an unhygenic pie factory to create the thing currently being used in a sex act (or the mother dejectedly buying apples for the next pie, or the apple growers accepting minimal prices for supplying the superstores in bulk), then it would have more in common with Y tu mamá también!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Thu May 15, 2014 7:38 pm, edited 4 times in total.

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manicsounds
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#12 Post by manicsounds » Thu May 15, 2014 7:29 pm

So it looks as if the commentary was not ported over.

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colinr0380
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#13 Post by colinr0380 » Thu May 15, 2014 7:53 pm

This is the rare occasion when Criterion probably made the right decision, if they were the ones that made it, to drop the commentary track. It is the three male leads from the film (Bernal, Luna and Andrés Almeida, who only appears at the beginning) ladding it up semi-in-character talking about dick measuring contests, whether women are more sensitive when they are menstruating and so on, with a quite strongly negative reaction from Almeida as "Saba" to the final threesome scene! (The word "faggot" gets tossed around quite liberally at this point).

The Region 1 MGM DVD has the commentary but didn't bother to subtitle it. The UK disc does have the commentary with subtitles. It is pretty inconsequential really and nothing to really need to be upset about not hearing.

Though the trio do amusingly complain about the narrator several times through the course of the movie ("Shut up! Who the hell cares!?!")

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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#14 Post by bamwc2 » Thu May 15, 2014 8:50 pm

Wow, Colin, I have the R1 disc, and once tried listening to the commentary. Unfortunately, my JH/HS Spanish from over a decade before wasn't enough to grasp what was going on. Sounds like I dodged a rather unpleasant bullet.

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feihong
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#15 Post by feihong » Fri May 16, 2014 3:12 am

chatterjees wrote:"Comedy"? I have watched this film twice, never thought it belongs to the comedy genre!
Did you ever see it in a theater? I saw it maybe 5 times in its initial run, and there were copious points at which each different audience laughed quite loudly. Though a lot of the time, some moment of significant gravitas intrudes on the laugh and in most cases it seemed to make the audiences feel guilty about having quite so good a time.

I watched it with a friend on Netflix the other day, and I was struck by how profoundly different the trip is for Louisa than it is for the 2 boys. Every shared moment is affecting Louisa in a radically different way than Julio and Tennoch are affected. It doesn't occur to a viewer the first time they see it, maybe, but with hindsight it's kind of fascinating to see the different reactions to the same set of events. I might modify colinr0380's point about the boys retaining their blinkered attitudes--I don't think either of them does exactly that by the close of the picture. What makes for the climax of the film is the event that pushes the two friends away from one another irrevocably, and it's interesting to me that this is the point where their reactions to a shared event are--really, for the first time in the movie--divergent. Tennoch is scared, and he at least feels that he should be revolted (maybe he is? it's not especially clear), but Julio doesn't really seem bothered at all. Again, Bernal is pretty brilliant, because in the last few scenes the two boys share, you feel the depth of Julio's regret in small gestures, in body language and rhythm--and you know it's regret not over what has happened, but rather over what Tennoch has decided to think about what has happened. It's very subtle playing and to me it takes the movie several levels deeper in its intent; it's rewarding enough to take us smoothly over the potential heavy lump of the
SpoilerShow
cancer
subplot.

It is a movie with a very particular tone to it. I don't know that many films that balance gently rude humor and heavy pathos so lightly--that was another thing that struck me upon my recent re-viewing. But I think the film definitely has the makings of a comedy. There's a great deal of fun to be had at the expense of the boys idiocy and their raging hormones. There's a good deal of sex farce going on, a lot of buddy-humor, and there's even a significant amount of play with the movie's literary trappings (the contrasting narrations delivered at the onset of Julio's stomach pain and Tennoch's immediate complement to that development got a big laugh every time I saw the movie in a group). There's a lot of character-based humor, as well--especially from Gael Garcia Bernal, whose changing facial expressions through all the dialogue sequences are an hilarious commentary on his own attempts to appear socially and sexually sophisticated.

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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#16 Post by colinr0380 » Fri May 16, 2014 4:10 am

I entirely agree with you feihong, and the ending is amazing for deepening that kind of pathos of the guys maturing in some ways, but not in others (like the country itself, or really any country, you just get older and somewhat more experienced, with more regrets and perhaps misplaced nostalgia for simpler times, as much as 'wiser'!). I remember when David Ehrenstein was still posting here, he talked about appreciating this film in the Children of Men thread, finding the final scene in the diner incredibly powerful.
SpoilerShow
It is layered in lots of fascinating ways and can be read on a wider level and the personal one simultaneously. There is the beautiful way that the film roots individual one-on-one relationships inside peer groups and then social groups, and then political groups, that is really fantastic and delicately observed.

I would still say that the two guys are blinkered for the majority of the film though, which is why I think of them as Rohmer-like. Once they kind of have their moment of maturity in the threesome scene very close to the end of the film, that is really the end of that stage of their lives. The teenage network of friendships have been blown apart, something that would likely inevitably happen anyway due to the social and class differences, which you can see in the already ongoing conflicts between the two guys and their interchangable girlfriends (naturally during their sex-obsessed trip, they choose to approach these conflicts by noting who has been circumcised, and things like that!)

In a way it is also a film in the Shinya Tsukamoto in Tokyo Fist or Snake of June sort of area (Snake of June also has a third act cancer deus ex machina section, which it deals with in a magnificent way), in which the main female character becomes a kind of facilitator figure for the two male leads. Are they 'using' her, or is she 'using' them, or are they all 'using' each other to fulfil their own needs? Luisa here is the most fascinating character, both mature and dealing with much deeper sadnesses, yet also in a way using the juvenility of the two lads as its own kind of escape. As feihong well describes, the beauty of this film is the way that it is able to contain a variety of different tones, and Luisa is the fulcrum at the heart of this - she is both the most mature but also could be seen as the most impulsive character, having a final fling. She is both the most grounded and worldly character in having adult concerns and cares for each of the lads (cares that they can't really express to each other) yet is also used for the key symbolic moment at the end of the beach scene as she walks along the beach turns to see the lads in the distance squabbling around the tent, and contentedly walks into the surf before we cut to the epilogue.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Fri May 16, 2014 12:22 pm, edited 5 times in total.

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eerik
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#17 Post by eerik » Fri May 16, 2014 5:08 am

felipe wrote:
criterion10 wrote:Pretty ironic that the cover isn't even up for this one yet.
Four years and they didn't have time to finish up the cover...
Five years in September... Also, didn't Criterion at one point say one of the reasons for the delay was scheduling conflicts with Cuaron to record a new audio commentary? That obviously never happened.

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rohmerin
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#18 Post by rohmerin » Sat May 17, 2014 6:16 am

It's so comical such as a "gay film" that was sold by somebody. Stupid both labels.

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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#19 Post by bamwc2 » Mon May 19, 2014 3:10 pm

eerik wrote:Five years in September... Also, didn't Criterion at one point say one of the reasons for the delay was scheduling conflicts with Cuaron to record a new audio commentary? That obviously never happened.
I believe that the explanation was always that they wanted the overbooked Cauron to approve the transfer.

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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#20 Post by Self » Thu Jul 24, 2014 9:35 am

Blu-Ray.com gives a pretty strong review

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Y-Tu-Mama ... 63/#Review

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manicsounds
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#21 Post by manicsounds » Thu Jul 24, 2014 10:00 am

The last time I saw this was when I rented the US MGM DVD back when it first came out. One subtitle problem I hope is corrected is when they mention about Plastilina Mosh (one of my favorite Mexican bands), the MGM disc subbed their name wrong, as "Plastilina".
Last edited by manicsounds on Mon Nov 10, 2014 1:13 am, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#22 Post by FrauBlucher » Fri Aug 01, 2014 12:22 pm


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FakeBonanza
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#23 Post by FakeBonanza » Fri Aug 01, 2014 2:08 pm

When I go to beaver to read a review of Y tu mama tambien, I do not expect the only visible nipple to belong to Gael Garcia Bernal.

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manicsounds
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#24 Post by manicsounds » Mon Nov 10, 2014 1:13 am

manicsounds wrote:The last time I saw this was when I rented the US MGM DVD back when it first came out. One subtitle problem I hope is corrected is when they mention about Plastilina Mosh (one of my favorite Mexican bands), the MGM disc subbed their name wrong, as "Plastilina".
Well, just watched and the band's name is corrected, and the subtitles are much more slang-ish than what I remember (but this is coming from watching the DVD more than 10 years ago). It does fit with the tone of the way the kids speak.

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domino harvey
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Re: 723 Y tu mamá también

#25 Post by domino harvey » Fri Dec 18, 2015 11:51 pm

Finally got around to watching this and Zizek's little piece is hilarious-- How can anyone be mad at a guy who absurdly postulates that Mexico exists to justify this film? As ever, bold ideas, name-checks of his usual critical crutches (Here Hegel), and a goofy joke repurposed to fit his argument make for a classic slice of Zizek. In the spirit of Zizek, I thought the movie was just okay but its release was justified by the extra!

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