Director
Alfonso Cuarón
Leading Actors/Actresses
Maribel Verdú, Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna
Supporting Actors/Actresses
Diana Bracho, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Andrés Almeida
Genre
Drama/Coming-of-age
Language
Spanish
Awards
Nominated for Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film
Date of Release
2001
Producer
Alfonso Cuarón, Jorge Vergara
Setting and Context
Mexico, 1999
Narrator and Point of View
An omniscient narrator voices the plot and sets the backdrop for the political and economic problems that backdrop the movie. The central story concerns Julio, Tenoch, and Luisa.
Tone and Mood
A contrast between comedic portraits of teenage folly and sexuality and more melancholic, ambiguous meditations on death, loyalty, and love.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Luisa, Tenoch and Julio are the protagonists; In some ways the antagonist is Jano, but there is not really an antagonist.
Major Conflict
One conflict is that Luisa's husband, Jano, has cheated on her. The more central conflict is that Julio and Tenoch realize that they both slept with one another's girlfriends behind one another's backs, information that comes to light after they both vie for Luisa's affection.
Climax
The kiss between Tenoch and Julio can be seen as the thematic climax of the movie. It works on multiple levels, firstly by developing the relationship between the two from one of friendship to one of romantic entanglement. It takes away the tension between them and shows a dynamic that has been bubbling beneath the surface all along. After the kiss, the movie quickly enters its denouement, as the two boys return to their former repression while becoming distant from one another, and Luisa dies a month later off screen.
Foreshadowing
Luisa's death is foreshadowed by an early phone call with her doctor and her going in for tests, accompanied with the death imagery including that of a construction worker, a commemoration of those in a car accident, and the story of the death of her first love.
Understatement
Julio and Tenoch tell their girlfriends not to sleep with anyone on their trip, understating their own desires to be unfaithful.
Innovations in Filming or Lighting or Camera Techniques
The entire film was shot with a handheld camera.
Allusions
The movie alludes to the economic and political crisis of Mexico in 2001 by subtly highlighting the civil unrest of the protests, and also emphasizing the rigidity of social hierarchy and how it inevitably leads to the breakdown of friendship between Tenoch and Julio.
Additionally, the film alludes to other road trip coming-of-age narratives.
Paradox
Tenoch and Julio's relationship to jealousy and territory impulses is paradoxical in that there is another, more complicated, tension underlying their anger towards one another. Tenoch gets angry at Julio for sleeping with his girlfriend, but does not reveal that he himself has done the same thing. Perhaps, as Luisa suggests, the paradoxical nature of their standards for loyalty has something to do with their disavowed desire for one another.
Parallelism
Julio and Tenoch are often parallels for one another.
