A well put together, heart-warming film evoking a novelistic style of voice-over narration first made popular by such films as Truffaut’s ‘Jules et Jim’ and later with Carlos Cuarón’s own brother’s masterpiece of Mexican cinema ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’. Personally, I find comparisons between this film and ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’ are often negative and in response to that I must argue the fact that although the two films do engage in similar modes of narration, they are completely separate entities from two different directors… Granted that they are brothers and a lot of the same individuals worked on both films… Be that as it may, it doesn’t seem that the cinematic style is what is in question, rather, people seem to have a problem with the performances of both Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna…

The problem here is that those critical individuals seem to be too romantically inclined in the sense that they hold up ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’ to a sort of cult-like status, refusing to acknowledge the fact that the actors/players must age over time and accordingly, directors and producers must mature and evolve in their manner of stylistic representation… Furthermore, they refuse to understand the fact that the films are not only separated by about 7 years – thus, have a different socio/political atmosphere from which to respond to and furthermore, represent different internal compositions as the artist matures over time – but they are also composed of completely different subject matter. ‘Y Tu Mama…’ focuses on the more affluent side of Mexican culture, one that is quite unfortunately, often disregarded and forgotten by Mexican auteurs… in fact, in ‘Y Tu Mama’ we are introduced to two bored, well off young men born into the Mexican upper-class… In ‘Rudo Y Cursi’ on the other hand, we get the heart-warming, entrancing story of the meteoritic rise of two country (ranchero) laborers who play soccer for fun and end up getting discovered by a talent agent when his tire breaks down in a small town in a rural area of Mexico… this talent agent ends up being the individual to narrate the story… In that sense, I find this element to the production to be very novelistic and almost evocative of the early 20th century novels of William Faulkner or Ernest Hemingway. Furthermore, I find this style of narration compellingly representative of Carlos Cuarón’s background in the study of literature… Who said studying English doesn’t pay off?