When my only biological child was born, I was glad he was a
boy. I was scared to death about
navigating adolescence with a daughter – in part because adolescent boys (not
to mention creepy older guys) just seemed so dangerous. Having been gifted with two adolescent stepdaughters,
their self-awareness is a bonus – and the lack of it on the part of most of the
reluctant son’s friends (he seems to be an exception – or maybe just hiding it
from me well) should have given me more pause about having a son – and this
movie would have clued me in had I seen it when it first came out in 2001. I didn’t see it then because the trailers
made it seem raunchy, which it is, but what the trailers didn’t capture was
that the raunchiness is one the more realistic integrations of sexuality and,
in one moment, sensuality into a film that I have seen. Somehow these Mexican filmmakers have allowed
their adolescent males’ sex lives to be part of their lives – and this has led the film not to be tawdry but rather deeply human.
It is not just sex that is realistically portrayed, but a
country that has a small elite ruling and moneyed class, a small middle class
and a very large indigent population – and it notices – off to the side - many
of the class tensions that are inherent in that structure – a structure that in
my worst moments it feels like our current government is hurtling us towards
(shortly before we saw this film the new tax code was passed that seems like a
handout to the rich and a guarantee that avenues for the other classes –
including good education and health care - to rise will have to be even further
closed off to pay for the largesse).
The film begins with two buddies having very different but
similarly hurried, though very affectionate sex with their respective girlfriends
before those girlfriends go off together to spend the summer in Italy. The boys reassure themselves that they will
have a great time getting laid a lot while they are away while also reassuring
themselves that their girlfriends will be faithful. They then fall into a summer lassitude where
they are largely hanging out with each other.
Tenoch's (Diego Luna) father is a the Secretary of Economics in
the doomed PRI party that has held power for 71 years but that will fall in the
next election. Because of his father’s
position, Tenoch lives in a lavish mansion with servants who don’t just wait on
him but care for and about him – he is a little prince. His father is on the board of the local
country club, so he has access to it on Mondays and he and Julio (Gael García Bernal), his buddy, who lives with
his mother who is a corporate secretary, have the run of the place – and it is
there that they have sex – masturbating – each on his own diving board and
offering images to each other that will help them orgasm.
The image that does the trick is that of an older woman –
the wife of one of Tenoch’s cousins, Luisa (Maribel
Verdú), whom they had tried to talk up at a wedding they both attended – a wedding
where, Tenoch pointed out, the body guards outnumbered the guests. Luisa gets a tearful phone call from her
husband who confesses to having been unfaithful to her over the phone. She then calls the boys up and lets them know
that she is interested in the road trip that they have offered to the secret
hidden beach called “The Mouth of Heaven” that they have boasted they know of –
though in fact they have made the name and the idea up. But, hey, you can’t pass up an opportunity
like this, so they borrow a beat up car and the three go off on a road trip
together to an imaginary destination.
What could go wrong with that plan?
The car trip affords them the opportunity to get to know
each other – meanwhile we, the moviegoers, are introduced to the country they
drive through. And I think I failed to
mention a fourth character – the omniscient narrator’s voice that tells us what
is happening – with the individuals – with the country – and he points out the fates
of incidental people and animals at various points – his voice is unhurried and
matter of fact while foretelling various deeply concerning and even outrageous
futures. So what do we learn inside the
car from this troika? Luisa, who is
married to someone with intellectual pretenses – a published author – is
pleased to be mistaken by the boys as a member of the intelligentsia when she
is, in fact, a dental hygienist. She
confesses that her marriage is largely empty – that she was drawn to her
husband by their shared experience of being abandoned as children and we learn,
over time that he has abandoned her on multiple occasions – she has been aware
of previous affairs – he has just never confessed before. We also learn that the boys belong to a
society that they have created themselves in which they have pledged undying devotion
to each other and imagine themselves, as the members of this secret society, as
great faithful and undying friends. And
we learn everyone’s sexual histories – with the boys transparently trying to
embellish their sexual prowess, which we strongly suspect is nothing but a
series of hollow boasts.
On the second day out, the car breaks down and the three are
stranded in a marginal hotel with a pool filled with leaves. Tenoch goes to Luisa’s room to borrow some shampoo
and she seduces him – not because of any particular attachment to him, we learn
later, but because he was first through the door. This has a tremendous impact on Julio, who
is reminded of the first great betrayal of his life when he discovered his
mother in the arms of his godfather. He
pays Tenoch back by confessing that he has slept with Tenoch’s girlfriend – and now Tenoch is stricken with the self-same sense of emptiness and loneliness. The next day, to make everything right –
Luisa has sex with Julio. Of course
this complicates things even further – but it also does create a certain détente
– and more importantly a shared sense of emptiness and betrayal – they have all
now been betrayed by someone they deeply trusted. It also lets us know – and Luisa as well –
that both boys are inexpert lovers who are too excited about the idea having
sex with another person to be present to that person – and so excited that it
is over almost before it begins.
Through the miracle of randomness – and as can only happen
on an epoch voyage – the troupe finds its way – quite by chance – to a hidden
beach that is every bit as glorious as one that they would have conjured out of
thin air. They set up camp and go
swimming – and they discover a fishing family who gives them shelter at a
nearby waterfront cantina and hotel.
They have a night of heavy drinking where they address all that is
problematic between them – offer carnal toasts – and end up in the motel room
together where the only truly sensual moment of the movie occurs. As Luisa is pleasuring both boys – the boys kiss
each other tenderly and deeply. We cut
away to the next morning where they wake up in each other’s arms and then
recoil from each other.
Luisa, who has broken up with her husband over the phone,
decides to stay in the fishing village and the boys have an uneventful ride
home. They drift apart and, two years
later, they have lunch together – and Tenoch explains that, unknown to both of
them but not to her, Luisa had cancer when they went to the beach – she knew
that and knew that it was untreatable and she died two months after their trip. The boys decide to get together again, but,
the narrator tells us, they never do.
I don’t think this bare bones account of the plot can convey
the depth of pleasurable melancholy that this film gave me. I think there may be a word – triste – in French
– or maybe a word in another language that conveys a pleasurable sorrow –
something that feels bad – but at the same time lets you know that you can only
experience this kind of sorrow if you are truly alive and care and are
connected to the world and that it has disappointed you not by being something
other than what you’d hoped for but by being exactly what you’d hoped for. This trip – this coming of age moment – this shared
journey – one that is deeply embarrassing to both Tenoch and Julio, because it reveals
the depth of their love for each other including its erotic elements –
something that was apparent to us – and to Luisa – long before that tender,
sensual moment – has been expressed.
This is a rare and precious moment –one that comes all too infrequently
to any of us. And it is too much for
them to bear – to know that they are, in fact, deeply in love – erotically in
love – and that they are unable to handle that – on the surface because they
are very straight adolescent boys, but also because as erotically attached to
the world as they are the intensity of that attachment is too powerful for them
to directly experience – it is too much for them to bear. They don’t have a place to put these feelings
– a category to describe it – a container for it – any more than Tenoch can
bear to know the life of the servant who cares for him – to know the village
that she comes from and that they drive through without looking at it. The boys are no longer snapping towels at
each other in the locker room but directly expressing all that was being
playfully denied in those actions that also expressed a much more limited
version of this fuller, richer and therefor intolerable experience.
Luisa’s sadness – something that she is able to communicate
to each of the boys by having them betray teach other so that they can all experience
it viscerally together – the sadness of losing a husband and losing her life –
and deeply loving her life – and wanting to live it fully but knowing that it
is limited – this all becomes shared among all three of them. She can bear this feeling on her own no
better than the boys can bear openly acknowledging their love – or their sense
of being betrayed by the other. The
sadness is shared among them – she can experience it with and in them – though it
is never openly acknowledged. They are
snapping a very different kind of towel together and we don’t know it – the full
extent of it – until the narrator fills us in.
But we do know it – under the surface –not quite consciously – because the
narrator has been telling us all along of the tragic endings that are all
around – how can they not be here in the central story that we are
watching? This is not the beery
bacchanal that the trailer suggests, and that this movie appears to be offering
on the surface – it is not about two randy adolescents having their way with a
young cougar, though it appears to be that at times to them and to us – it is
three people sharing something profoundly and deeply connecting – their love of
life – their love of each other – and a fragile moment that will tie the three
of them together only for that moment - a moment that is both the most profound
moment of connection they may ever experience – and the most profound
experience of isolation they will ever know.
How privileged we are to be able to share in moments like this. What a gift this film turned out to be.
It is a gift that I turned away from twenty years ago
because I was embarrassed by what looked like an adolescent fantasy film. Little did I know how potent adolescent
fantasies can turn out to be – and how adolescent sexuality – filled with its
bravado and its anxiety and its rush to nothingness – may signify something very
central to the human experience more generally.
By marginalizing the sexual – by turning away from it – as we do time
and again – I protected myself, as the boys were able to do early in the film –
from the experience of the intensity of sorrow.
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You switched the characters half way through this summary. Tenoch goes to Luisa's room to ask for shampoo and she seduces him.
ReplyDeleteThank you. I think I've fixed it now. My error betrays my poor memory for names but I think also the interchangeability of the two boys. This is a film about adolescence, not about particular boys.
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ReplyDeleteGood to be in touch, let me know if you want me to remove this comment.
ReplyDeleteyes, please! thank you
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