A road trip: Julio from working-class circumstances, Tenoch from a rich family. Joining them is Tenoch's older cousin, Luisa, who has just been cheated on by her husband and is invited along because the boys want to sleep with her.

 

The film shows Mexico before the turn of the millennium. The non-digital world is smaller and at the same time larger; one must drive out to see it. Yet Julio and Tenoch are blind to everything outside the car windows. They are too preoccupied with themselves to understand the larger contexts of their environment. They mostly talk about sex; they even masturbate together, and up until the point, at which their rivalry for Luisa becomes too intense and at the same time brotherly love is threatened by homosexuality, sex appears to be the great equalizer, connecting the young men across the boundaries of their different backgrounds.

 

However, to speak of equalizers is an argument of the political center. To speak of the pandemic, as if it would weld people together because it potentially affects everyone. The pandemic and sex are close where they are used as an argument for our equality. The gathering in the lowest common denominator, the synonym for capitalism, dissolves in the film into the fear of homosexuality, because this would force Julio and Tenoch to reflect on their inequality. To understand why that is, let us explore how Cuarón enters the political plane of the body.

 

The bodily reaction of inequality is reflected in the voice of the omniscient narrator. He explains to us the class difference in the restroom. When Julio is at his rich friend's house, he lights matches to cover the smell. When Tenoch is at his working-class friend's house, he lifts the toilet lid with his foot. These details are entrusted to us with the addition that neither knows this about the other. Where borders are invisible, they reveal themselves in the intimate.

 

Likewise, the possibility of homosexuality exists through the presence of life in gender; sexuality is, like going to the toilet, collectively intimate. Juvenile class reality and suppressed sexuality relate to reality like the unconscious to the conscious—it says: Even if I wanted to, which I don't, I couldn't tell you, because I'm not aware of it.

 

Coming out as an acknowledgment of sexual reality becomes synonymous with the exposure of class reality. Through the reciprocal connection of sexuality and class, the dissolution of the one only succeeds in the other. Cuarón has dismantled the conflict down to its foundations.

 

However, a central mistake must not be made by the viewer, and that is disregarding the historical context of the film. Otherwise, the takeaway could be: Since we are much more open towards homosexuality, in a 2026 adaptation of the film Julio and Tenoch could get together. Therefore, class differences could be recognized and there is a chance for reconciliation.

 

For one, the argument could be made that now transsexuality has taken over the sad role of the sexual scapegoat. By no coincidence with the same boring arguments as they were 30 years ago: It’s against God, it’s against nature, kids should not be exposed to that, those people are sick and therefore unable to choose what’s good for them, slippery slope, and so on and so on.

 

But I do not think that that is what we should focus on, when we discuss the question of how a remake could look today. And I tell you why:

 

Cuarón shows us lies, packaged in as much cinematic truth as possible—clear camera work, little cutting. The sex is graphic but not pornographic, the conversations are crude, the arguments silly. And just like five years later in Children Of Men, a truly seeing, independent camera opens the world to the viewer through the deliberate digression from the main action.

 

Since even this cinematic realism is not enough, Cuarón must resort to an omniscient narrator: this is the brutal dividing force of fate. Not the fate of divine providence, but that of class determinism. Cuarón could have shown us how Tenoch lifts the toilet lid with his foot or Julio lights fragrant matches. But it is narrated, and more: He says that the boys don't speak about it. He points out the absence of what is said. This creates information that doesn't supplement scenes like a flashback but penetrates what is shown. At the end of the film, he reveals Luisa's true intention – quite casually. She is terminally ill during the trip, she is the "last person" who does not ask the last question, but the most important one: What should I do?

 

In a small fishing family, she recognizes her ideal of silence and simplicity. The boys' invented innuendo travel destination, la Boca del Cielo (Mouth of Heaven), which to their astonishment actually exists and is the home of a fishing family, simultaneously symbolizes the answer to the final question and Luisa's paradise. The narrator, who announces that a luxury hotel will soon be built here, which will take the fisherman's work and ultimately employ him as a cleaner, is probably the most striking warning: Capitalism will rob you of heaven yet.

 

And it is here where the film truly shows its place at a fixed time. Haven’t we been robbed of heaven yet? The public outrage of two people of the same gender has been replaced by people who question their assigned gender. The public outrage about questions of simple humanity will not cease, it circles. What is linear though is the homesickness for a lost time that will not come back.

 

When the film came out it was a contemporary piece that only played two years in the past (the film came out in 2001 and takes place in 1999). Watching it twenty-five years later, it seems like a different world. It all seems so inevitable. Of course they have built a hotel in the Boca del Cielo, it’s prime real estate! It seems so logical, since we have already seen it happen. Every place that was once magical has been capitalized on, couldn’t be left to exist for itself.

 

But it is not logical! We must never forget that. To rid the world of beauty and simplicity is not logical.

 

If Y Tu Mamá Tambien were made today, we would need to reverse its logic. The hotel has already been built. Once you get to heaven, there is a waiting line with a Fastlane option. From here, where can you go? Wouldn’t the boys fully need to escape into sexuality, into themselves to find freedom? Since they can’t, since there is a fight for their right to do so, they must go to the hotel. A private public space with no possibility of real freedom. And here we have the pitfall of the left: Instead of fighting hotels, the left has had big issues communicating about anything but gender issues.

 

People are not against homosexuality or transsexuality because there is something wrong with it. They are against it because they have been made afraid of it by the hotel owners. If Julio and Tenoch cannot find Boca del Cielo, they will not once find freedom. The left may think if we resolve sexual suppression, we can find freedom without heaven. But there is no freedom without heaven.