Two boys lie on adjacent diving boards in an elite Mexican resort on "janitor's day". With no one around they lie nude on their boards feverishly stroking their cocks with damp brows yelling out images of girls and their body parts as they mutually masturbate under the Mexican sky. In the movie Y Tu Mamas Tambien, Director Alfonso Cuaron delivers us a dualistic story about the fragile bonds of youth, sensual desire and friendship steeped in the cruddy and gorgeous rot that is quintessentially Mexico.

The story opens up upon Summer vacation as best friends Julio and Tenoch frantically fuck their childhood girlfriends goodbye to send them off on their own libertine European adventures. Tenoch, son of a wealthy Mexican politico and Julio, an aggressive and endearing buddy from the poor side of town, spend their first days of freedom getting soused at a family wedding where they meet Luisa, a sexy 28 year old Spaniard married to Tenoch's philandering writer cousin. The boys, soaked in ether, manage to spin Luisa a tale about an upcoming vacation that they will soon take to a paradisiacal beach near Oaxaca called Heaven's Mouth.

Much like adolescence itself, Tenoch and Julio are full of ripening fruit still unaware of the inevitable bruise. Driving from point A to point B on road of eternal carelessness, they pass their time by telling fart jokes, blowing off college thoughts and racing under water in pools of pristine blue competition. When Luisa calls days after the wedding ready for adventure after her husband confesses his adulterous sins to her, Tenoch and Julio jump in a car without much thought and the three of them take off for whatever is destined to come.

The way that the relationship between Julio and Tenoch is handled is as perfect as the sublimely descriptive cinematography of an impoverished Mexico. They tell Luisa of their Cholastera club and name off rules for inclusion such as "Do not screw each other's girlfriends". They smoke mounds of pot. They regale Luisa with their innocent boyhood vixenry and shebe comes all too eager to comply with their nonchalance. Their trip takes them along the coast where muted blues and sea greens are muddied by the poverty of a country so humble yet so lush.

When the trio becomes stuck in a seedy hotel overnight after their car breaks down the inevitable happens. Upon confronting Luisa and Tenoch having sex, Julio doesn't barge in but instead roams down to the swimming pool filled with sand and leaves clad only in his bath towel and sits down to dangle his feet in the murky water. When Tenoch finally joins him for a swim, they once again race beneath the leaves as if underwater their interactions become muted with the realities of life and desire.

When Luisa, Tenoch and Julio finally alight accidentally upon their Heaven's Mouth beach and an ambitious family in a boat drives by to offer them Cerveza and ceviche, you know it is only cinematic moments before a naked threeway romp will come. At this point you are ready for it, eager for it, longing to be with them skinny dipping in an ocean where poverty is the great equalizer and humanity is stark naked beneath a blinding sun.

And when the vacation ends as all do, all three of them continue on their separate ways. Years later the boys meet and over coffee and Tenoch tells Julio of the secret he later learned about Luisa. We learn why Luisa was so eager to be reckless and nonchalant, and we find a lesson about living life to the fullest and embracing both the saint and the sinner endearingly within.

--Kimberly Nichols

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