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Y tu mamá también 16 years later: gala at the 15th FICM

Gustavo R. Gallardo

The film Y tu mamá también (2001, dir. Alfonso Cuarón) was screened tonight at the 15th Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), with the presence of the three founders of the festival, Alejandro Ramírez, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Batel and Daniela Michel, as well as Carlos Cuarón, actor Diego Luna and singer Marco Antonio Solis.

Before the screening, a theatre armchair was unveiled with the name of the actor Diego Luna, who thanked FICM for the gesture.

It has been 16 years since the first time the film was released it in cinemas, but, as they say, it has aged well, as a story that closes a cycle (and a century) in Mexican cinema.

Through two young Mexicans and a Spanish woman, Y tu mamá también portrays a Mexico that goes from the chaos of the city - full of protests and social classes, a Mexico so boring, that the idea of leaving it turns a trip to the supermarket into a party- to rural Mexico, of empty roads with crosses for the forgotten dead. During the trip, which leads the characters in search of something that does not seem to exist - friendship, love or that beach - Julio and Tenoch explore each other in utmost intimacy, discover jealousy and something that can strengthen their friendship or defeat it.

Cuarón and Luna speak about the movie

"It was a relief to lose the Oscar for Best Screenplay (against Pedro Almodóvar) because it was all coming to an end. The Venice festival was cooler, it gave me a pedigree I'm not sure I deserve," said Cuarón.

For his part, Diego Luna said that when the film came out "they did not allow young people to see it, although I didn’t know any fifteen-year-olds who hadn't seen it. Carlos and Alfonso Cuarón are the real "charolastras" and I think they have not stopped being so", says Luna sharing laughs with the audience.

The film, starring Gael Garcia, Diego Luna and Maribel Verdú, seems to close a cycle in Alfonso Cuarón's career. Until that moment, he had directed Solo con tu pareja (1991), The Little Princess (1995) and Great Expectations (1998), films with which he made a name for himself in the United States, which took off with Y tu mamá también and, with it, attracted bigger productions like Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Children of Men (2006) and Gravity (2013), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director in 2014.

“Si no te hubieras ido” leapt from a cantina to the big screen

Carlos Cuarón recounts that the photographer Maya Goded worked on a series of photographs with prostitutes, when one of them, in a cantina, got up and put the Marco Antonio Solís song in the jukebox: "It was suggested to Alfonso, we listened to it and thought it was the only one for the scene".

Marco Antonio Solis, for his part, says that he offered to release a new track for the film: "I made my contribution to the film and my career took another direction. From then on, with that song, my career took an international turn."

"There is no bar where they don't play it ("Si no te hubieras ido"). It's a "charolastra" anthem," Diego Luna said of the tune before Marco Antonio Solis sang a verse the audience sang along to: a connection to a movie that, 16 years later, remains strong for a generation.

The film, a professional gamechanger for all

The cast's career also reached another level. While Gael García already had international attention after participating in Amores perros (2000, dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu), after Y tu mamá también, Diego Luna participated in Frida (2002, dir. Julie Taymor) with Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina, and The Terminal (2004, dir. Steven Spielberg), with Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

At the same time, Emmanuel Lubezki, who already had a name in Hollywood, was called to work on heavyweight films more frequently: Children of Men and The Tree of Life (2011, dir. Terrence Malick), for which he was nominated for the Oscar for Best Photography, an award that he took home three times with Gravity (2014), or Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) and The Revenant (2015).