We see a lot of sex in the cinema. It is one of the movies’ perennial subjects, perhaps the subject. Even when it is disguised as romance, allowing a large amount of genteel pussyfooting around the issue, we know that it’s really all about sex. Like Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman’s long, long kiss in Notorious, from the days of serious censorship, we understand that this is about the meeting of more than lips.
Since the Sixties and the demise of the old censorship regimes, and in recent years, as the language of pornography seeps into the visual lexicon, filmmakers have become ever more explicit in their treatment of sex. We now routinely get to see an actress’s breasts or an actor’s buttocks. We even, when an actor is feeling particularly Oscar-worthy, get the occasional view of a penis.
But it often seems that there are only two ways in which the cinema is able to make sense of sex, to narrate it. One is what might be called the Hollywood mode, which is as artificial as that of pornography. Here the tendency is to pump it up with soft golden lighting and swooning music, to present it as the airbrushed ecstasy of perfect bodies; it is idealised and stylised to within an inch of its life. It may look nice, but it doesn’t often feel very real.
The other way of dealing with sex is that of the “art” movie. Here the boundaries of naturalism are being pushed. Films such as Last Tango in Paris, and, more recently, Romance, Intimacy and The Piano Teacher, try to give back to sex the reality Hollywood has leached from it. And yet, in counterpoint to the glossy heavings of Hollywood, all these movies come out with an extremely depressing view of the beast with two backs. Sexual freedom leads to death, or desire is a form of painful bondage — or the sex itself just isn’t good enough.
So when do we get a movie that treats sex honestly and yet without what often seems like a hangover of medieval Christianity? Well, we in South Africa get it this week, in the form of Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También. That title translates as And Your Mother Too, but in this country, with our rich heritage of mother-based obscenities, you may be able to improvise a little on that.
The story (co-written by Cuarón and his brother Carlos) is simple. Two young men, just out of high school, take an older woman on a car trip across Mexico, heading for a mythical beach. Given that the two youths, Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal), are typical 17-year-olds in that they are driven largely by lust, and that the “older woman” (Maribel Verdú) is not yet 30, and has problems of her own from which she is escaping, you can guess what happens. It is inevitable but still surprising. Moreover, like any good journey (and this is, after all, a road movie), the trip itself is as exciting as the destination.
The movie’s loose-limbed, easy-going style, along with the road-movie format, allows events to unfold organically. Significance is not forced or contrived. The rapport between the two horny boy-men, friends from childhood, is utterly natural and convincing; the interaction with the woman works out its own logic impeccably, with all the little hesitations and detours of which life is made. The political and social context is dabbed in neatly, unobtrusively and tellingly. The cinematography is casually elegant.
This tale of a sentimental and sensual education may embarrass those who still prefer their carnal relations shrouded in mystery, but it is also funny, sexy, sad, engrossing and exhilarating. I think Y Tu Mamá También is my movie of the year.