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vinita14
Reviews
Y tu mamá también (2001)
Eroticism and Death
Y Tu Mama Tambien has at times been accused of representing the innui of a privileged class of people and fails to do much more than that. I think it is precisely the poignancy of the sort of people it captures that makes it work. Maybe it's an obvious point that privilege does not give you freedom from the pains/vulnerability of erotic encounters, or from the inevitability of death. As someone else commented here, the film is remarkably well structured and delivered in terms of the narrative structure. When the narrator shares little anecdotal details about Tenoch and Julio, as well as the stories surrounding them, all sound ceases, save for the voice of the narrator. It has the effect of pulling you in and out of the film, and testing the bounds of cinematic reality. Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal convey all the zeal, hormonal intensity and naivetee of adolescence.
The film also links eroticism with death. There is the suggestion that we have an intimacy to both in our lives. We can't really escape either. We are born, we make love and we die. Everything else is contingent and these are the sure things. This is especially so when you play it back in your mind and think of their little gestures of love towards each other - everything from the mundane bits of not mentioning what they don't like about each other's habits, to jerking off by the poolside in rhythm to their delightful sexual fantasies. However, everything passes and things do not last permanently.
There is this sense throughout their road trip, that the randomness of death strikes elsewhere - the nameless, faceless statistics of the working class, the impoverished, the indigenous of Mexico. But all the while, it is absolutely, intimately connected to the three of them. It is not so much Ana's relationship to Tenoch and Julio, or her imminent death that is the real issue. She knows all the while, what is going and she is aware of her imminent passing. It is the relationship between the Julio and Tenoch that is really striking. It's so solid, but so transient. What/who dies such a quiet, unnamed death at the end of the film isn't Ana or all those other people we hear about from the narrator. It is the relationship between the two after their momentary crossing of the intimacy boundary. That's what really hits in the end. Nothing really lasts and death isn't just about the physical or material. It is very much about the emotional. This isn't to suggest that the film seemed nihilistic. The fact that it so blatantly confirms this sense of the inevitability of death (despite all the intimacy, all the screwing around and the love, the bonds we forge) is somehow grounding. That seems to be the paradox of the whole film.
Julietta (2001)
A derivative plot and boringly trendy
Christoph Stark's second film comes not so long after that trendy, popular flick 'Run Lola Run' by Tom Twyker. It must still be fresh in Stark's memory, because something in 'Julietta' smells derivatively of the latter film. While Twkyer's film was quirky, and combined music with fast-paced shots without being too "MTV" about it, you have to wonder what Stark really wanted to do.
The plot is all rather banal: young, and in all probability, wealthy German youth party it up at the annual Love Parade in Berlin. The protagonist Julietta heads up with her friends from Stuttgart to see her boyfriend Jiri and promptly loses him in party fervour and drugged out disorientation. In her near-unconscious state she has what should be a disturbing encounter with Max - a DJ/producer with a sensitive heart even though he'd sleep with a woman when she's passed out.
Julietta returns to Berlin with a dilemma on hand and meets up with Max again (who has been befriended by boyfriend Jiri), and of course, what unravels is a predictable case of three-way tension, and so-called matters of the heart.
Stark's camera movements - often times rapid - and the bright hues of primary colours that fill the screen (Julietta in bright reds) are all affected attempts at being stylistic, but come off strained. It is as if he wants to make a film about youth culture and troubled emotions, absent parent figures and city life. But all he does is churn out a conventional tale with a supposedly unconventional twist in the plot. This twist in the plot is set to make us believe that men who take advantage of women may suffer profound guilt afterwards and have a compassionate heart. Itself characterized poorly in the figure of Max.
There's neither alluring style, nor substance to this film. An absolute waste of time. A pity, because lead actress Lavinia Wilson offers a promising performance which is wasted on this film.