Y Tu Mamá También with Adriana Ortega

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Bechdel Cast, the questions asked if movies have
women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
or do they have individualism?

Speaker 2 (00:10):
It's the patriarchy.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Zeph and bast start changing with the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Hey, Jamie, Hey, Kaitlin, do you want to go on
a road trip with me to a beach and then
we'll kiss at the end?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hmmm?

Speaker 1 (00:27):
How old are you? Howlme?

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Where you and I are the same age in this scenario?

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Okay, but so we'll hook up? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, yes, yes, yes, Okay,
let's go, let's go and let's uh, let's just go
just us.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Okay, that sounds great, b end wonderful story. Hello, and
welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My name is Caitlin Drante.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
My name is Jamie Loftus, and this is our podcast
where we examine your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens,
using the Bechdel Test as a jumping off point for discussion.
But Katelyndurante, what the hell is the Bechdel Test?

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Well, it's a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel,
sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace test, which first appeared in
Alison Bechdel's comic Dykes to Watch out For in the
mid eighties as a goof as just a little bit
in the comic, and it has since become a widely

(01:33):
used metric. And our version of it is that two
characters of a marginalized gender have to have names, they
have to speak to each other, and their conversation has
to be about something other than a man. And we
especially like it when it's a juicy meati conversation. Oh okay, yeah,

(01:57):
that was gross. I'm sorry, No, it's good. It's what
are they They scallops? They have some different types of seafood.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, okay, yeah, we have to have a meadi seafood
y kind of conversation.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Nice.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Yeah, So that's what we use as a springboard to
talk about movies and the representation they're in. Today's movie
is a movie from two thousand and one directed by
Alfonso kron Ittumama Tambien, and we have an incredible guest

(02:36):
joining us. She is a Spanish tutor. She's a former
university professor, an educator all around. She's also a Mexican
immigrant who moved to the US four years ago, and
she's my personal Spanish tutor. It's Adriana Ortega.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Hi, I'm so excited to be here.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Well go, we're so start to have Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
First of all, English is not my first language, so
this is going to be a rite.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
But be patients with me, of course.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah. And I love this movie. It's very important to me.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Yeah, tell us about your relationship with the movie.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Well, this movie came when I was in high school.
When I was in my last year of high school,
and I have two very good friends. One of them
I don't talk to very much, but the other one
is still my best friend. And the one that I
don't talk to anymore had like a cool mom. Everyone

(03:44):
has this friend who has the cool mom, so that
her mom took us to see it Mata been. My
parents would have never okay, And since she was the
cool mom, let's take the kids to see a movie
with sex.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Every parent has to at some point for some reason.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, so we loved it. We quoted the movie. It
was like, I don't know our American pie.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
Oh okay, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
If there's an equivalent, because we didn't have that before.
Like Mexican movies were boring, like movies about people our age,
like young people. Movies had to be American to appeal
to us. So this was like the first Mexican movie
made like for us as an audience and of course

(04:38):
as girls, as young teenage girls, seeing Diego and Guile was.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
Like, oh, oh my god, it's sickening, unfair, attractive those
men are.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
They're so beautiful and they were so young. They were
so young now that I see it, they had baby face.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Twenty years old.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Do that.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
I'm always shocked at. I mean, it's like Diego Luna
is not old, but he has been famous for so long.
It's wild because he was like a teen idol before
this movie.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
No, no, he was a child idol. They Diego and
Guyle have been in Mexico. They were soap opera stars
since since as children, as little kids. Yeah, there's this,
oh even younger.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
They were eleven years old when they were in a
soap opera named Ella Wueloy so grandpa and me h yeah,
and everyone had a Grussian Guile since he was eleven
years old, so they were big and Gile disappeared for
a while, Ygo kept being in soap operas. So when

(05:50):
we saw them in this movie, well, Gile had already
filmed a More Esperos, but Diego was still in our
minds a child soap opera actors. So they blew everyone's
minds with this movie.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yeah, suddenly they're naked and they're masturbating and they're kissing
each other spoiler alert.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah, and acting like so good.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
They're such good actor. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah, the way they changed the tone, it blows my mind.
So that's my story with the movie. I've been a
fan of those two since I was a kid. I've
always liked movies, and I've always been aware of director's
names and all of that. So Alfonso quarn directed Great

(06:45):
Expectations with When It Through and it and.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
I've not seen that.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
It's good. It's very good. So he was coming back
to Mexico and everyone was like, Oh, it's a famous
director who's already working in then now he's doing a
movie about Mexico, and everyone was excited about that too. Yeah,
I was that annoying teenage person who knew the director's name.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
He had also directed The Little Princess before this.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, yeah, I didn't.

Speaker 4 (07:18):
I think I grew up with that movie, it's okay, look, well,
I'll be completionists one day day. I'm also a little
Princess head, but I'm not a Quarne completionist.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
I have some gaps. I think it's just great expectations
and gravity. But I always confused Gravity an Interstellar because
it was like two of our most famous living directors
directed space movies so close together.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
I don't know, true, Jamie, what is your relationship with
Ittomoma Dumbion?

Speaker 1 (07:52):
So I'd seen this once before, but it was a
very very long time ago, and I had not retained
very much of it. I think I was far closer
to the young boys characters in this movie the first
time I saw it. Now I think I may be
the exact age of the older member of the maid cast.

(08:14):
So it was very different viewing experiences, and I was,
I think, watching it with friends the first time. But
I do remember to me, as a dufus American New Englander,
that I first learned of this movie when Harry Potter
three was announced and Alfonso Crone was the director, because

(08:38):
in my like ten year old world, they were like
and this guy has directed a Little Princess, which I
loved and also this very sexy movie that I'm not
allowed to watch because I you know, I was eight
when this movie came out, so I definitely wasn't allowed
to watch it. And I don't think that my parents

(08:58):
did either, because they back horny movie depth, I guess,
but yeah, this movie had like mythic status in my head.
So I watched it when I was in college. I
remember really liking it in college, and this is the
first time I have revisited it in I think at
least ten years, and I mean, holy shit, there's so

(09:19):
much to talk about. And also, I mean I remember
when I watched it in college, and again this is
like goofy. American kids will know that I saw Diego Luna,
and to me, I'm like, it's the guy from Dirty
Dancing Havana Knights that I had a crush on because
I was really into Dirty Dancing Havanah Knights. I don't
know how well that would do on this show, but

(09:40):
that was like a sleepover movie. Dirty Dancing Havana Knights
was cannon to me, and so that's where I knew
Diego Luna from at the time. And now, you know,
everyone in this movie is such a legend it's so
well acted. I think it's one of the most interesting
road trip movies I've ever scene, because I mean, there's

(10:01):
so many ways to do a road trip movie. I
feel like often there's goofiness. Often coming of age movies
are either like over dramatic or overly goofy.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
I associate them with like gross out comedies a lot.
I feel like a lot of American road trip movies
are like gross out comedies.

Speaker 5 (10:19):
I mean these movies not that this movie isn't very
gross in points, which it is, but I also think
like the alternate to that I'm thinking of, Like, I
don't know why this movie is coming to my like
a road trip that is.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Like rooted in mourning from the jump right where it's
like I'm on a road trip to go see my
sick relative, or I'm like on a road trip to
do something sad, a goofy movie goofy see and the
most serious coming of aged road trip of all. But like,

(10:54):
this movie is so like I don't know when movies
are trying to be profound, I feel like it rarely
hits for me. But this movie is so messy and
it's silly and it's serious and there's a lot to
talk about, but I feel like it's just like it
made me uncomfortable at times, and I wonder how I

(11:14):
would feel watching this at a different point of my life,
because it may be uncomfortable because it's about all of
the things that you don't say or acknowledge in the
day to day even when you're having a goofy movie experience,
and like everything that is like stewing under you that
it is just like so inherent to who you are
and how you can see characters in this movie doing

(11:37):
something that on its face is unkind or confusing or
bizarre or sad or funny. I don't know, like that.
This movie just I've never seen anything like it, and
it made me, I think, squirm in a good way
because you're like, ough, people are so hard. Anyways, this

(11:58):
is an interesting movie to revisit, Caitlin, what's your history?

Speaker 3 (12:02):
I saw this movie a few years after it came out.
I think I saw it in two thousand and four
when I was a freshman in college. A friend showed
it to me and I immediately loved it. I was like, Okay,
these people are so sexy, and that was my first

(12:24):
introduction to both Gail Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, and
I've loved the Gail Garcia Barnw I've mentioned this on
the show before. He is my future husband. I love
him so much. And You've been saying this for years.
I've been saying it for years. Also Now as a

(12:44):
huge and Or head, I think I just need to
enter a throuple with the two of them.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
I haven't seen Ander yet, Audrina, have you seen it yet?

Speaker 2 (12:54):
It's so good, damn it.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
I was like, Okay, I'm alone and not having seen Andrew,
I do have to watch.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
It's incredible.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
It's the best Star Wars product that has ever come out.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
I agree. So I love both of them. I do
want to make both of them my husbands. And it
all started with this movie and then just as a
piece of like storytelling, this is such an incredible movie.
I'm not big on your more like slice of life
character study type movies. I tend to prefer like big,

(13:30):
out of this world genre film, but this is like
such a well done, incredible movie with interesting characters, and
just like the way it examines life in Mexico and
the little snapshots you see of people who are not
like the main cast. But I like that it takes

(13:51):
the time to tell little narratives, little kind of vignettes
almost about different people or like historical events and things
like that. Just I think it's a really interesting way
to craft a narrative. And I love this movie. It's
one of my favorites. There's lots to talk about, and

(14:11):
I'm excited to get into it. So let's take a
quick break and then we'll come back for the recap.

(14:31):
And we are back, okay, So here's the recap of
the movie. We are in Mexico City in the late nineties,
I think it's nineteen ninety nine, and we open on
to Notch played by Diego Luna. He's having sex with
his girlfriend Anna. She's about to leave on a trip

(14:55):
and they're promising each other not to cheat on each other.
They're with other people while she's away. Then we meet
Julio that's Gail Garcia Bernal. He's also saying goodbye to
his girlfriend Cecilia via having sex with her because she

(15:15):
and Anna are going to Italy for the summer together.
They're best friends, and Tonoch and Julio are best friends,
so we see them like bidding their girlfriends farewell at
the airport, and then they're just kind of hanging out.
They're goofing around, they're enjoying their lives as like quote
unquote single guys for the summer. They're farting a lot

(15:41):
in front of each other as a goof.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
There's a lot of like triggeringly teenage boy content at
the very top of this movie, where you're like, all right,
you're lying, you're insecure, you're farting.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
You're wearing a right, your whole personality is driving a
weird car.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
You're like, I've seen this guy, yeah, and I've fallen
in love with this guy.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah. Of course that's when my notes I hades and
these guys, Oh.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
My god, they're so unlike the other guys we think
at the time.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah, so they're like hanging out, they go to this party,
they swim in a pool. We see their penises in
the locker room. It's a thing. Also, I did not
realize how I thought they were college age the first,
like many dozens of times I saw this movie. We

(16:40):
just learned that they are still in high school, so
that we'll talk about that. But anyway, I'm like, oh god,
I feel weird now. The actors were like in their
early twenties when they filmed this, but like.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah, but they're just we talked about this for Adriana.
You said this may have been a translation thing, because, Yeah,
at the big beginning of the movie, I thought it
was the classic like summer trip after senior year kind
of thing that we've seen. The movie is a lot,
but you're totally right. At the end of the movie,
we flash forward a year and they have just gotten

(17:15):
out of high school, so this is the end of
their junior year of high school there.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, so in Mexico there are three years of high
school and they're about to start their senior year. Because
when they're in the car farting, they have This is
not in the subtitles, but Dono says that his dad
is mad at him because he doesn't want to study

(17:39):
Aria tres, which means so the last year of high
school in Mexico, we get to choose which area of studies.
It depends on what you're studying in university. So he
wants to be in Area four. He wants to be
a writer, and his dad is mad at him because

(18:01):
he doesn't want to be on Area three. So that's
how we know they're about to start their senior year.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
I say, okay, got it.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Well, yeah, we'll dive into an age gap later on.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
But anyway, god damn it.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
You know some people start their senior year at eighteen
in Mexico, So okay, so they may be seventeen or eighteen,
they're not like fourteen or fifteen. There must be about
to turn eighteen.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
Okay, let's pretend that that's true for the sake of
our ability to enjoy the events that transpire.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
For everyone listening. I guess, yeah, full transparency, we are
not sure, and it's the movie doesn't sure. At least
the translation that I watched it was not totally clear.

Speaker 3 (18:53):
Right anyway, So we see them hanging out, and we're
also getting a lot of voiceover narration about each character
we meet. So we learn, like you said, Adriana, that
Tonoch wants to be a writer. He comes from an
upper class family, his dad is a politician. Julio comes

(19:14):
from a lower class family. He lives with his mom
and sister. He hasn't had contact with his father in
many years, so we're learning things like that. We're also
throughout the movie getting voiceover narration like I said, with
these quick little anecdotes about different people in the community,

(19:34):
maybe it's like something that happened at a location that
they are at years prior. Just again these little like
snapshots about different characters or situations. Then Tonoch and Julio
go to a wedding where they meet Luisa played by
Maribel verdu. She is married to Tonoch's cousin Hano and

(19:59):
to know, Julio immediately take a liking to Luisa, who
tells them that she's gonna be hanging out by herself
for the next few days while her husband Hanno is away,
and she wants to go to the beach. And Julio
is like, ooh, we're going to the beach. Isn't that
right to Notch and Tonch is like, yes, yes, it

(20:23):
definitely is. We are going to the beach that definitely exists,
and it's definitely called La Boca de Clo, which translates
to Heaven's.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Mouth, which is a great joke.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
One of the things this movie does in a fun
way and then also goes back later to get a
little more layer, is just like how much specificity that
they make Hanno seem like a real drip and like
a real piece of shit annoying up his own ask
guy baby, right, And then you get the narration that

(20:55):
is like, Okay, he comes by it honestly, like which
every asshole technically comes by it honestly. But then you
get to go back and you're like, well, but also
he's an asshole.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yeah, we are not meant to sympathize with him.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
No, And I like, when we get all of the
context for a character and we still don't sympathize with them,
that's like super right, rare.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
It feels like yeah. So anyway, they're talking to Luisa
about this fake trip that they are going on, and
they're clearly just making all of this up, and they
invite her along, knowing that she'll probably decline, and she
does brush them off. So the next day they just
carry on with their lives. They are fantasizing about having

(21:40):
sex with Luisa while they are jerking off side by
side at the swimming pool. Meanwhile, Luisa gets a call
from Hanno who admits to cheating on her, and she's devastated,
and I think the next day she calls to and

(22:00):
is like, hey, you're still going to that beach? La
Boca de Cielo, right, and Tonocha's like, yeah, duh, we're
leaving this afternoon, and she's like great, I want to
come with you. So now tanoch and Julio have to
scramble to put this trip together so that they can

(22:21):
take Luisa with them. They borrow a car from Julio's sister,
they grab some groceries, they get confusing directions from their
friend Sabo, and then they pick Luisa up and start
driving toward a random beach. Basically, they're just like going
toward the coast. On the way, the guys get to

(22:45):
know Luisa and they tell her about them. How they
call each other Charlelastras. They have a manifesto. On their
manifesto is stuff like there's no bigger honor than being
a Charles Astra. Never fuck another Charle Astra's girlfriend. Jerking

(23:07):
off is awesome.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
Oh my god. Unlike fight club they have eleven rules,
and fight club is frustrating enough. But I'm like, there's
eleven rules and some of them contradict the other rules,
and no one follows the rules.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
But two of them repeat, Yeah, they hate what is it?

Speaker 3 (23:28):
The like American club football?

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Like, I don't like this word but slur for gay. Globe.
America is a soccer team in Mexico that everyone either
loves or hates. There's no middle ground, no one is indifferent.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
Felt that way based on Hanning yea.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
But my family is they like America, so we're on
the other side.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
Okay. So then that night they stop for some food
and drinks and Luisa admits to them that Hanno has
been cheating on her, and later on, when they're at
a hotel, they go and like try to spy on her,

(24:22):
but they see her crying, so they kind of scurry
back to their room, and the next day they set
off for the beach. She calls them out for spying
on her, and then the conversation turns to sex. She
wants to know how many people they've slept with. She
asks them how they make love to their girlfriends, and

(24:47):
at the exact moment that she mentions putting a finger
in someone's asshole, the car breaks down and so they
have to stop for the day. We see Luisa crying
in her room again. We will come to understand why
she keeps kind of breaking down and crying. But anyway,
as she's doing this to no barges in to borrow

(25:09):
some shampoo, and then she's like, hey, drop your towel
and come here, and he's like, TIHI what. And then
they start fooling around and they have sex and he
comes very fast, and then we pan over to Julio
in the doorway, who has seen the whole thing, and

(25:31):
now he's very jealous and he's like, by the way,
to Noach, I fucked your girlfriend Anna. And now to
Noach is super jealous and upset, and he interrogates Julio
all night with all these questions about this affair.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
Basically, I have so much to say about that scene,
where it's like, even in these moments of true profound hurt,
it's like the women are incidental and talked like as
if they're symbols or objects and not.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
And they like are slut shaming their girlfriends. Yeah, like
using really disparaging language. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
Yeah, well we'll come back to it, but yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
Yeah. So the next morning, in the car, while Tanoch's driving,
Luisa climbs into the back seat with Julio and starts
kissing him to sort of like restore the balance, because
she can tell that there's a lot of tension between them,
so to not she's pissed off. He pulls over and
runs off while Luisa and Julio have sex in the

(26:41):
back seat.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, Louis is like, there's only one way to resolve this,
having sex with a second teenager. You're like, Louisa, God,
damn it.

Speaker 3 (26:52):
No, we'll come back to it. So they have sex,
and then he also comes very fast, and then shech
and she's like, well, this is what you wanted right, like,
you were both trying to fuck me. That's why you
invited me on this beach trip. And she realizes that
she shouldn't have had sex with either of them, but
she's like, well, too late. Now let's go. So they

(27:15):
set off again. They're driving and to Notch is like, hey, Julio,
me too. I also had sex with your girlfriend Cecilia,
and then they get in another huge fight. They're screaming
at each other. Luisa is like, you guys are pigs
and your babies and I'm leaving. So she storms off,

(27:39):
but they convince her to get back in the car,
but only after she's like, okay, we do this my
way or the highway. I'm not gonna fuck you again.
And you can't fight with each other or be annoying,
and you have to leave me alone whenever I want
you to. And they're like, fair understood. So they're still

(27:59):
trying to get to the beach, and that night they
pull off somewhere and get stuck in the sand, so
they just call it a night and pass out in
the car. Then the next morning, Luisa wakes up and
discovers that they are very close to this beautiful, you know,
secluded private beach, and so they start to enjoy the beach.

(28:22):
They meet this couple, Chewi and Maybell, who take the
three of them on a tour in their boat, and
Chewi is like, oh, up here is a good place
to swim. This beach is called La Boca de Cielo,
which is the same name that to Know Sin Julio
made up earlier. So they're like, wow, what a coincidence.

(28:44):
So they're hanging out, and then that night to Know
Julio and Luisa are eating and drinking. They're talking about
sex again. They're toasting to blow jobs and toasting the
glitterists and all this stuff, and then and Julio drunkenly
confess that they have had sex with each other's girlfriends

(29:06):
multiple times, and then Julio is like, itu mama tambien,
meaning I had sex with your mom, also hence the
name of the movie.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
And at this point they're like woo.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
Yeah, They're like yeah, dude, awesome. And then the three
of them start dancing and they go back to their
room and they have a threesome I think, one of
the most famous threesomes committed to film. Although upon the
rewatch I was like, this doesn't I mean, it's like steamy,

(29:44):
but I'm like, I remember this being way more I
don't know, like pornographical most than it is.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
Like Caitlin's like, I've seen so much hardcore porn at
this point that it's like, so tme came to me
and it's weird.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
You're not wrong, but anyway, So the next morning, Luisa
tells the guys that she's going to stay with Chewi
and Maybell for a few more days, so she parts
ways with Tonch and Julio, who returned to Mexico City
and then drift apart as friends. We cut two months
later where they bump into each other for the first

(30:22):
time in like a year. Because it's like the following summer,
they decide to get coffee and catch up, and to
Notch reveals to Julio that Luisa passed away not long
after they parted ways. She had cancer, which she found
out about right before she went on that road trip

(30:43):
with them, or.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
That I thought that was a little unclear that it
was like I think that she maybe found out that
the cancer was past the point of no return or something.
Oh maybe, yeah, I wasn't clear. And the way that
she talked to Hannah on the phone, like if he
knew that she had cancer but that it wasn't terminal,
or like to what degree that he knew. But I

(31:06):
think that maybe he didn't know, because otherwise he probably
would have caught on. So like she knew that it
was terminal and maybe was like trying to hang in
the relationship as long as she felt it was possibly
treatable or I don't know, I'm not totally sure. I
fe like it was left pretty open. Who knew what?

Speaker 2 (31:23):
No, Yeah, I think Hannah they didn't know. And she
finds out like right before the trip. So she finds that.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
Because we see her at a doctor's appointment where she's
like picking up test results, and I feel like it's
at that appointment where I don't know if she learns
about the cancer for the first time in that moment,
or she just learns that whatever illness she had was terminal. Yeah,
but I think it's implied that she learns that she

(31:51):
only has very limited amount of time left prior to
the trip, which is sort of what motivates her to
go on. Absolutely anyway, so they discuss Luisa having passed away,
and then they part ways again and that meeting is
the last time they will ever see each other. The end,

(32:15):
and then I'm crying. So that's the movie. Let's take
another quick break and we'll come back to discuss Where
shall we start.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
I want to start with the cass Okay, the case
between them was like a very big deal in Mexico because,
as I told you, we knew those guys as kids,
as child actors. Yeah, and it was like the first
time I think that cultural products that I saw was

(33:00):
like criticizing toxic male friendships. Well, I don't know if
it's a criticism, but it was the first time I
saw something that implied that these toxic, corny guys who
are like hyper masculine and hyper sexual are in the

(33:24):
closet or something like that. It started a conversation, and
I was just reading an interview with Alfonso quarn that
said that some people at the cinema in Mexico started boeing,
oh wow when that happened. Yeah, because it was a

(33:44):
big shock. But I loved it. I think it was
very bold. And I was like seventeen years old when
I watch it, and it made me think. It made
me like, Wow, all these guys in my high school
who are like very toxic and very muchural, secretly want
to kiss each other.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
So yeah, I haven't seen an awful lot of Mexican
cinema or like, depictions of queer romance or sexuality pretty rare,
or at least at this time.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
No, they didn't exist. Everything in Mexican cinema before this
was either chadros with their big sombredos and guns and
stealing women singing and or there was a period in
the eighties and nineties when all the Mexican movies were

(34:45):
raunchy comedies and women were barely there. They were objects.
They were wearing biginnis and having no dialogue. Or in
the sixties seventies, the luchador movies that were like superhero movies,
like our Mexican superhero movies, where the luchadors were heroes

(35:09):
and rescued women. Maybe there were there were not very
popular movies that were about gay romance, but we didn't
see anything like that before.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
Not in the mainstream. No, I mean, that's not dissimilar
from American cinema.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
But I think it is really I mean, I listened
to a few interviews that Alfonso Quaron did when this
movie came out, and then also at the twentieth anniversary
point of this movie, and it is really fascinated here.
I mean, I think it's really admirable that such an established,
successful director wanted to go back and create a movie

(35:55):
that engaged with masculinity, engaged with the politics and class
politics of his home country, and engage with queerness in
a I think good faith way at a time where
like no one anywhere was doing that and like it

(36:16):
could get you booed, and it just feels I know,
on the show, we hate to hand it to a man,
but I really do. I mean, I think, like, especially
because of how established he was in Mexico, in Hollywood
and everywhere at this point, to go back to tell
a story that is clearly very personally important to him

(36:37):
and also knowingly risky for the time is really cool.
And I don't know if like this movie engages with
ideas of masculinity and puts it in context with the
politics of the time and place without excusing the behavior

(37:00):
way that is, like I think better than a lot
of movies try to discuss masculinity.

Speaker 6 (37:06):
Now, yes, it's yeah, I agree, And I think we've
talked about this before in different episodes.

Speaker 3 (37:17):
How there's this weird disparity between like almost every movie
being about men, but so few movies actually centering a
compelling male friendship in the way that I think this
movie does. And yes, these characters are pretty toxic. They

(37:38):
have a lot of love for each other, but it
comes unraveled because of their insecurities and you know, their
toxicity and their fragility, all of that stuff. But it's
just interesting to see that closely examined in a way
that just feels so extremely grounded and real, Like so

(38:01):
many you know whatever, seventeen eighteen year old boys are
exactly this way and their friendships are exactly this way,
and it's just really interesting to me to see a
male friendship portrayed so authentically in a way that like, yes,
these characters they're likable to me, but I can also

(38:24):
absolutely but they're also the one recognize that they're like yeah,
like they're.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Because exactly like there's such a juvenile like anyone who's
ever been around teenage boys with something to prove kid
relate with this where it's and this is something I
remember from my teenage experience in people of all genders
to sort of deflect their own complicated feelings towards the

(38:52):
people around them, because it seems like for Julio and
to not exploring their sexuality is not allowed, and like
it is not just like a societal block, it's also
a mental block where it's like you cannot allow yourself
to think that this is something you could explore. And

(39:13):
so there's like this deflectiveness that I feel like we
probably all experience as teenagers that instead of being honest
with how they're feeling about themselves or about their own experiences,
it's easier to default to what you think you're supposed
to say and how you think you're supposed to treat
other people. And in the case of these teenage boys,

(39:33):
as I think is still common, Like, it ends up
being deflective in a way that is cruel to girls
and women that they know, in a way that is
like because they're unwilling or feel unable in ways that
can be understandable, but it doesn't make it the fault
of the women in their lives. And it's like in

(39:54):
the way that it's written and the way that it's
performed in this movie, it feels clear that that's what's
happening and that it's pretty incredible because I think sometimes
when we see those narratives played out, it's presented as well,
you know, this is how guys are because dudes rocks, right,

(40:16):
But the way that this story in this Friendship plays
out demonstrates that they are not just projecting and being
unkind to the people around them, they're also trapped in
a like vision of themselves that they can't fully be
themselves like and it's just everyone in this movie is

(40:37):
both experiencing joy and experiencing connection but is also still
in like a prison of themselves in a way that
feels like I think that was why it was like
hard at some points to watch because you're like, oh no,
that's everybody.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
And the narrator those a great job of explaining to
us what the inner conflicts are these characters and the
outer conflicts, because the political climate in Mexico at that
time is so important. It seems like it's not that important,

(41:15):
but it is because it happens in nineteen ninety nine.
Nineteen ninety nine was the last year of the PRE
that was the political party that governed Mexico for seventy
one years. So the Notts father is a politician from

(41:37):
the PRE and their reign is ending.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
The castle is crumbling, and they.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
Are being groomed. I hate that word nowadays, but since
they are kids, they are like, so you're going to
be in office, and they're preparing them to follow the
steps of their parents. I know who these guys are.
And so the part when he says he wants to

(42:09):
be a writer, it's very important because you know he
will not since the narator says he's the son of
a politician in power, and the president is at the wedding.
I don't know if you remember this.

Speaker 3 (42:22):
Yeah I didn't mention it in the recap, but yeah,
he's there, and.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
There's a moment where the father says, Stenogia, if we're
still at a president. Did you go to say hello
to the president like you will be working for him?
But then the next year that political party doesn't win
the elections and it's like the start of the real

(42:47):
democracy in Mexico. And it's very symbolic of the journey
because they because at the same time the system of
movement in Mexico crumbles, their friendship grumbles. Is something like that,
Wow symbolism.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
I was like, I had questions about that for you, Audrianna,
because yeah, I did some reading into like what is
the political moment that we are falling into here? And
this is again like dufus American where I read scholarly
journal Wikipedia. But that's fascinating to know because it does
feel like there's a lot of different ways to approach

(43:27):
the dynamics in this movie, where obviously I think we
sort of default to looking at the gender dynamics in
the movie and the class dynamics, but we don't fully
understand the cultural dynamics. And it's clear that Quorn wants
us to engage with all of those things at once,
which I think is like part of what makes this

(43:48):
movie challenging and brilliant. If you're not originally from Mexico,
is that it just feels very clear where you hear
how the characters talk, you some times find out what
happens to them in the future. Sometimes the narration in
this movie is so fucking cool because it will just
stop the action of the movie and draw your attention

(44:10):
to a character sometimes that never comes back to contextualize
where you are, and also contextualize what the main characters
of the movie are either ignoring or just sort of
taking in stride in a way that you wouldn't question
unless the movie is taking you out of it to

(44:30):
say like, hey, this is so normalized, or the privileges
that these characters have are such that they can just
ignore this, right. And then sometimes it's about people. Sometimes
it's about the history of a place that they fully
don't know or couldn't possibly intuitively know. And I think
it's really cool that I don't know. It seems like

(44:51):
Quorn has an interest in literally everything in this movie,
and it has like in a way that I think
most road trip movies. I mean, I think of like
American road trip movies where it's like, Okay, we have
to stop somewhere in the South and we're going to
do a really cartoonish depiction of the American South, and
then we're going to stop in Vegas and we're gonna
do a really cartoonish depiction of Vegas. And they're all

(45:13):
set pieces, but there's no intellectual interest in who lives
there or what the history is, right, and this movie
will interrupt a silly scene about blow jobs to tell
you something about the history of the land they're driving over.
It's really cool.

Speaker 3 (45:32):
Almost always with an emphasis on class disparity or like
the little stories will be a working class person or
a person living in poverty dealt with this or is
dealing with this, or you'll see examples of like people
being detained by probably corrupt cops and things like that.

(45:56):
And then there's one scene in particular that really sticks
out to me where they're driving past this small village
called Tepelmeme, where Tonoch's nanny Leo is from. We get
voiceover about how she immigrated to Mexico City when she
was thirteen. She is the person who raised him from birth.

(46:21):
He called her his mom for the first four years
of his life. You also see a scene with her
earlier in the movie where like the phone's ringing off
the hook to Nocha's right beside it. He doesn't do
anything to answer it. He's like expecting her to answer it.
She has brought him food, and then he also kind

(46:43):
of like very dismissively sort of shows her away. So
it's just like showing the way that this rich kid
son of a politician is like so dismissive to like
a woman who helped raise him. Also, she's an Indigenous woman.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
And another fun fact, he's wearing Sapatista's T shirt in
that scene. His nanny brings him the sandwich. He's wearing.
The Sapatistas, I don't know you've heard about them are
like an indigenous rights movement in Mexico. They're very important.

(47:21):
And yeah, so while he's treating his nanny like garbage,
he's wearing the face of an indigenous leader in his
tea shirt.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
Okay, hypocrisy, sir.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
That moment was a huge for class that I feel
like Quarn revisits in Roma, which is a whole other
discussion and a whole other episode, because that's a very
separate discussion. But Alfonso Quarn, it seems like the experiences
of the teen boys are closer to what he experienced

(47:56):
growing up. He grew up with a lot of privilege
and sort of continue to explore that in roma, which
we'll cover it down the line. And he also wrote
it with his brother, which also feels telling where it
seems like and the interviews would sort of indicate it's
not autobiographical, but there's a lot of themselves in the
way that the two young men are presented. And the

(48:20):
other class moment that really hit for me was in
the way that the boys relate to each other and
just even in touching on how they react to each
other's bathrooms in a very class driven way, where one,
when the working class character is in the rich character's bathroom,
he tries to erase the smell of shit, and then

(48:45):
when the rich character is in the working class characters bathroom,
he doesn't want to touch anything because it's like, you know,
he seems to feel that it is dirty, less or whatever.
And I think that that is like a complicated class
dynamic that literally exists in the same you know, half
a mile in any neighborhood, and it seems like it

(49:06):
does for these guys, and a way that I think
it's very easy to say, like I'm a class hero
because like, sure, I have a lot of privileges, but
look at my friend over here where it's like these
very intimate moments that are actually telling.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
And this is in my notes. Julio's his underwear, he's
always wearing like tidy whities.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
And then the brand, the brand he's wearing is Rambros.
This is not sponsor, like Rambros. Underwear is like the
cheapest underwear brand in Mexico. And it was very deliberate. Okay,
I saw a documentary. I saw it on YouTube. I

(49:53):
don't know if it was like a DVV something, but
Guile didn't want to use them. They didn't want to
wear them because they're like the cheapest. But it was deliberate.
And during the wedding scene, he's wearing like a shirt
that looks like from the seventies with waves.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Like those like roughly yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Yeah, he's wearing that like clearly something that was like
from his father or yeah. And when they get in
the fight in the second fight, when the notch says
that he slept with Julia's girlfriend, Julio's pits in the

(50:39):
window of the car. Do you remember that the subtitles
don't express what the note says, but he says something horrible.
He says, like a like a very classist slur in Spanish?

Speaker 1 (50:54):
Is this what translates to hill billy?

Speaker 3 (50:58):
The version I had watched. The English translation translated it
to hick. So he's like, Oh, you're such a hick?

Speaker 2 (51:04):
What's a hicks?

Speaker 1 (51:07):
I think it's it's all sort of the same thing,
but it's not a slur. It's an insult. It's a
class based insult, but it's not a slur necessarily.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Oh no, but in Spanish she says a slur. Oh.
He says, you had to show off you being a
slur A class is slur. And it feels like it's
been inside of him. I don't know the way. The
way he delivers this line is like.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
He's been like holding it back their whole friendship. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
That's how it feels to me. And there's a there's
another moment when Louisa is telling them that she wanted
to travel but she couldn't. Julia says, yeah, yeah, traveling,
traveling is cool or something like that. They're not. Says
you haven't even been on a plane something, right, So

(52:01):
they build up to this moment.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
It's really interesting to watch like what their dynamic is
like and what they are willing to put out in
the open versus withhold because for example, like they will
jerk off near each other and they will eventually kiss

(52:25):
each other in it's while they're drunk. It's unclear if
they would be willing to do that if they were sober.
It's unclear exactly what their sexualities are. That was just
sort of like a moment of experimentation. But there's like
a sexual component to what they are willing or not
willing to do around each other. And then there's like

(52:47):
we said, those sort of class things where they're best
friends and they're very close, but they are harboring these
prejudices and or insecurities about their class differ friends and
in a way that again like boils to the surface.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Sorry it's my hilarious joke.

Speaker 3 (53:05):
Oh sorry, what was it said?

Speaker 1 (53:06):
Prejudices and or something and or and it makes you
fake it really doesn't know. I again, like this movie
does so much with not just how masculinity is this
big performance and you know, femininity is a performance, and

(53:28):
but in this movie, it's like masculinity is a performance
that hides and obscures and avoids and deflects all of
these other things, and like you're just saying Kitlyn and Adriana,
because I also was like, how is this being translated?
What is hillbilly in this context where it's like that
is what is actually being held back in someone that

(53:51):
they very obviously love but don't have the maturity or
life experience to be able to like square next to
how they've been conditioned to see the world. And they
clearly love each other, but their classes are so different
that they inherently are judging each other. And they clearly

(54:14):
love each other, but they can't get into this conversation
without using a woman as a vessel for the conversation
in this weird way with their girlfriends or with Louisa
or with whoever. And I wanted to ask you about
how you felt about this. There was a friend that

(54:35):
we never see who is gay, Who is gay? Daniel Yes,
who comes up over and over, And also I thought
most telling they comes up in the final scene of
the movie that I thought was an indication that these
characters we don't know and maybe they don't even know
at this point. They're very young, but like seem to

(54:57):
at least think about what it would be like to
be able to identify safely as queer in some way.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
Because in that last scene, they're asking about people they know.
They ask about Savah.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
Yeah that is the stoner friend.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yeah, the stoner friend, the.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
Guy who gives them the bad map.

Speaker 3 (55:19):
Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
And then I don't know who asked who, but they
ask about daniel and I think Julio says, no, his
his father threw him out of the house, and then says, oh,
that's bad, and Julia says, no, no, he's very happy.

Speaker 3 (55:36):
Yeah, he's happy because he has a boyfriend and you know,
the romantic relationship will fix all your problems.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
He he well, no, that conversation felt I don't know, Adria,
I'm curious because it felt like that. Yeah, that conversation
was like also politically loaded, because they were like, oh,
Danielle is really happy, and they also in the translation
I watched that, they're like, well, he's full queen now,
so he got kicked out of his parents' house. So

(56:05):
I feel like it also like indicated there is a
level of like he had to sacrifice his family in
order to live authentically, and it feels like that is
like a little bit of what is at the core
of the problem with Julio and is like it extends
beyond their sexuality. It's a very multi layered issue, but

(56:27):
there are all of these things, some personal, some political,
some both that are preventing Julio and Tonoch from living
as themselves authentically. And I feel like anytime Danielle was
brought up, especially because it's not a character we meet
or know, and it feels like he's brought up more
as a symbol, is like, well, we have a friend

(56:49):
who is out, who is living authentically, but there was
all of this loss and shame heaped upon this person
we care about as a result of them living onthentically.
And is that something that I'm prepared for? And I
think for them the answer, at least in the time
of their life that we're seeing, that answer is no,

(57:10):
and it's presented non judgmentally. But I don't know. Yeah,
I feel like the specter of Danielle was really interesting
to me.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
Yeah, because they ask each other which universities they are enrolling,
and they not says ITAM, which is they're not She's
going to study economy at ITAM. That is every politician
in Mexico has studied economy at ITAM. So when he

(57:41):
says economia is like he's going to be a politician.
So there we know that he's not going to be
a writer. And Julio says, biology at WAM and ONAM
is a public university that is free. Universities are free
in Mexico.

Speaker 3 (58:01):
Brad, I'm so jealous.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
And biology in that university is like, it's not they're
not hippies that they're kind of okay, they go camping.
They have this fame of going camping and living in nature.
And yeah, so when they tell each other what they're

(58:25):
going to study, that's how you know that that they will.

Speaker 3 (58:30):
That they never be friends again. They they're on very
different paths.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
Yeah, yeah, that's so oh god, there's so many layers
to this damn story. It's so good. Like, I that's
so fascinating to know because it's like you can sort
of get a whiff of that if you don't know that,
but if you have the knowledge, you're like, oh, yeah,
that is exactly what he's trying to say.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
And have you read about the names the character's names.

Speaker 3 (59:00):
No, oh no, tell us.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
Okay, So Alfonso and Carlos Quarren named their characters. All
of their last names are from Mexican historical figures. So
Julia's last name is Sapata, Julias Sabata, and Sabata was
like revolutionary leader. The not last name is it and

(59:26):
Itorde was like another historical figure, but he was like
a rich historical figure, like another revolutionary, but like a
high class person.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
And like the privileged.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
Yeah, yeah, like a rich revolutionary. I should have read
more about these characters before telling you this, but.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
We know nothing. So this is great.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
But Louis's last name is Cortes. It is the last
name of ernand Cortez, that like the biggest conquistador.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
Yes, and then I mentioned that was it that was
almost named Ernan?

Speaker 4 (01:00:08):
Yes? Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
The Generator says his father came with a lot of
nationalism because he was just elected for office and then
he named him the notes. Yeah, so this is like
another thing from Mexico. We grew up with this idea
that all the races are mixed and there's just only

(01:00:31):
one Mexican race, which is a lie, and racism exists.
So a lot of white rich people believe that they
own indigenous Mexican traditions and names, and you see like

(01:00:51):
basically blonde women wearing like indigenous clothing because they they
believe they own it, like they have as much claim
to the culture as knows people themselves, and it's it's
a mess. Yeah, But you see these rich people naming
their kids.

Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
The note or because that's an indigenous name, right, Yeah, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
A now name, so it's very common. So when you
know his name is the Notch, it's like it's one
of those.

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
Okay, That's something I actually wanted to touch on a
little bit as well, because I mean, Diego Luna and
Gail Garcia Bernal are white people, right. This is something
that I I mean, I've had a lot of confusion
about this throughout a large chunk of my life. I
think a lot of Americans in general, especially non Latin

(01:01:50):
X Americans, assume that if you're from Latin America, you
are not white. That like Latini dad is a race
and it is not white. And I think that there's
a lot of confusion about that there are white Mexicans
and white people across all of Latin America. Because I've

(01:02:11):
like had conversations with people where they'd be like, oh, no,
they're not white, they're Mexican, and I'm like, well, you
can be both, yes, But like, what I wanted to
mention that I think is worth mentioning is that it
is cool that this movie does, you know, pan over
and like tell a little tiny story about characters who

(01:02:32):
are indigenous, or who are elderly, or who are struggling
with poverty, but it really just like still kind of
puts those characters in the background and still focuses on
these white characters with European features and European backgrounds, and

(01:02:55):
that is a very movie thing to do. Yeah, but yeah,
I just wanted to explore that a little bit because
I think there's still so much confusion about race and
ethnicity as it relates to Latin American communities and people.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
Yeah, so, yeah, there's a lot of diversity. There's Afro
Mexican people, and there are Indigenous Mexican people, and there
are people who are descendants of European and there are
all the mixes in between.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
Because you described it to me before as like in
the US colonizers there was a lot of a lot
more genocide and in Latin America it was a lot
more rape, yes, right, And like forcing their like eurocentric

(01:03:55):
and like you know, Christian values onto the indigenous population.
Versus in the northern part of North America, it was
more just eradication.

Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
Unfortunately, Indigenous people here in the North don't exist. We
don't want them to exist. We put them away. And
in the South it was like, oh, indigenous people want
to be like us, Let's give them kids that look
like us. Jesus and it's yeah, it's both are horrible.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
It's true. No, I mean this is like I don't know, Like,
as I was listening to your conversation, it was just like, oh, yeah,
of course that's the most American thing you'd do. Is
also feel like, oh yeah, we did the main way
of how to suppress an indigenous race, which is the worst, Caitlin.
I mean, I'm very much in the same boat as

(01:04:53):
you where I feel like I was conditioned to view
Mexico in a very particular way. It was very homogeneous
and in a way that was I was like not
conditioned to consider gradients like race, class, gender, that I
was not encouraged to look at here, and of course,

(01:05:14):
like everywhere is going to have their separate issues, and
that the issues of oppression are going to be unique
to where you are. And I wonder, because I haven't
seen Roma since it came out, I remember some of
the criticism that it was met with, and it seems
like this is an issue that this specific director has

(01:05:35):
an interest in and also has a lot of criticism
around his attempts to tackle it, because as far as
it pertains to this movie, I think that there's based
on what we were just talking about, it seems as
if he wants to acknowledge the diversity in Mexico without

(01:05:58):
centering it and any way, and that's why he is
like centering these characters that sort of more closely represent
his experience as well as a woman from Spain who
is like an outsider in Mexico. And so Adriana movie,

(01:06:19):
you disagree, and I'm not fully understanding. It doesn't feel
quite like set dressing. But indigenous characters and characters that
represent any sort of diversity within race or class in
Mexico seem like it's to contextualize versus to give any

(01:06:41):
arc or story. It's just to tell us where we
are versus give us a character.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
And I think quar On for people like him and
the characters and me because yeah, I grew up in Mexico,
but I grew up with a lot of privilege, So
you know, you live in a country with problems and
with inequalities. And I think what quo On wanted to

(01:07:10):
reflect in the movie is that when you're a stupid,
privileged teenage person, you see those problems as background. Yeah,
and I'm not saying it's okay, but you live in
a country with so much problems that you just mute them.

Speaker 1 (01:07:32):
Yeah. I think that like squaring that on Qua or
anyone person is not fair. And I do feel that
that comes across and that most movies would not even
draw your attention to what its centered protagonists are ignoring
or missing. And I think that there's some value in that.

(01:07:53):
And again, like doing this episode it maybe want to
revisit Roma and see how this director's attempts to address
diversity evolved over time.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
But with Roma, it's because in this movie, I'm not
saying it's okay, but it feels honest. He was a
privileged kid, so he's telling a story about privileged kids
who ignore all the problems around them. And with Roma,
he feels like he can talk about things that are

(01:08:32):
not his stories.

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
To tell, right, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
I like Rama. It's a beautiful movie, and it's beautiful
and Jelie size amazing and she's so good in it.
But so many people say, and I agree, that it
maybe wasn't his story to tell.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
Yeah, which is like so much of the criticism that
I feel came up around this movie. And we'll get
into Rama when we talk about Roma. But also, yeah,
it was so incredible in this movie, and she has
barely worked since, right that I think she wasn't lostocause
one of our greatest television shows up this time. But

(01:09:17):
it just it really it is like a personal thing
that I think we've seen over the years in this show,
in just in movies where an actor gives an incredible
performance and has a huge cultural moment, but it ends
up seeming like it's in service of the director's moment,

(01:09:37):
and then they are not given the opportunities down the
line in the way that you would think. She is
an Oscar nominated actress. She turned in what everyone says
is an unbelievable debut performance, and we haven't really seen
her in the five years since, and I just find
it so frustrated and.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
What she says, is that she has to decline roles
because they're super offensive.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
Yes, this.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
It's not that she hasn't been offered.

Speaker 3 (01:10:05):
Work, is just that the work she has been offered
is racist.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Right, something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
And you're just like, this is not an issue that
the Timothy Shallow Maze of the world are encountering. And
it's like, you can be a very, very gifted actor
and perhaps and I am, I guess subtweeting, but like
a better actor and struggle to find the roles that
you deserve. That's not what we're talking about with this movie.

(01:10:32):
But Yeah, I was just sort of brought back because
I forgot about this from when I had seen it
in college, how indigenous Mexicans were acknowledged within this movie
but not centered, and how that sort of evolved throughout
Quaman's work. However, we have not really talked about Luisa
Louisa Let's talk about Louisa Let's.

Speaker 3 (01:10:56):
I really like her character, at least just from like
a superficial point of view. I think that she's more
well rounded of a female character than you would generally
see in just kind of any given movie, and especially
one from a movie that was written and directed by men,

(01:11:17):
and I also appreciate that as the movie goes on
and the more you learn about her and her circumstances,
the more her choices and actions make sense, because again
you learn by the end that she had a terminal
illness that she found out about not long before she

(01:11:43):
knew she was going to die. So she was basically like, Okay,
I need to make the most of what life I
have left, and this opportunity presents itself with these teen boys.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
Wouldn't have been my choice, but you know, nor mine.
I would have been like, hmmm, where are my female
friends at and can we go on a little trip?
Versus two streitch.

Speaker 2 (01:12:09):
But on the other hand, they're the Eggo and guy.

Speaker 3 (01:12:12):
I know. I just wish. I wish the story had
aged them up to I don't know, twenty one, and
then it would not be a really gross thing.

Speaker 1 (01:12:25):
Yeah. Well, that's one of the most difficult parts of
this movie for me is the age ambiguity, because I
think that there is a way to look at this
where you're like Luis is even in context of what
she's doing abusing the power dynamic between for sure and
these questionably aged young men.

Speaker 2 (01:12:45):
Yeah, because she knows they're willing to do whatever she wants.

Speaker 1 (01:12:50):
Yes, that was what I was confused, Like, I don't
know if that was a question that the movie was
trying to get me to grapple with, or if it
was just like it was two thousand and one, who
cares about the age of consent kind of thing? Like
I genuinely was unclear on it because it made me uncomfortable,
and I didn't know if the movie wanted me to

(01:13:11):
be uncomfortable about it. The way that I read the
original reviews and the synopsis of it seemed like it
did not want me to be uncomfortable about it. And
it's frustrating because their age and their naivete about the
world around them is inherent to who they are. Like,
I think if you age them up too much, their

(01:13:32):
level of naivete doesn't make quite as much sense. But
because of the situation they're in, it's necessary for the plot, like,
and so it just kind of became a clusterfuck for me.
And I'm like, if they are like theoretically, if we
take out so many things we've already discussed, and they are,

(01:13:52):
you know, twenty three, twenty two, twenty three, and they're young,
but they're you know, consenting adults that are just dufases.

Speaker 3 (01:14:01):
Sure, which I mean plenty of examples all over the
world of.

Speaker 1 (01:14:05):
That it happens every day. Then I feel like there's
a way to view Luis's actions as cathartic and as like, oh,
I am pitting your assumptions about me against you to
just like feel good in the time I have left.

(01:14:28):
But because of their dynamic, it just gets it gets
really fucking in a.

Speaker 3 (01:14:34):
Way that it again, like I mentioned, it didn't even
occur to me, or I didn't I wasn't even aware,
or I didn't realize what that gap was the first
several times I saw this movie. Because while the movie
does call attention to the fact that she's older than
them and you know, more experienced the way that you

(01:14:56):
experience life more when you are older, I don't think
it's trying to make you uncomfortable about like, oh it's
this you know, older person exploiting this power dynamic. It's
more just like a haha, look at these young duficices
who have this awesome opportunity to get with this sexy

(01:15:19):
older woman. I feel like is how everything is framed, and.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
If that is the way we're supposed to read it.
The ending bugs me a little more because I guess,
like I just maybe it's a personal thing. But like
once you see her at a doctor's office, I was like,
with all due respect, she's fucking toast. Like that felt
clear to me. Very early in this viewing, which is

(01:15:44):
the first viewing in ten years, I didn't fully remember
the ending, but it was like, Okay, she is just
not operating on anything other than I want to feel
as organically good and cathartic and connected to life as
I can in the limited time I have left, which

(01:16:05):
is a beautiful premise within the way, you're just like,
oh my god, I don't know, Adrena, how do you feel?
I just like she's so challenged because I love Luisa
and like, from certain viewings, I want her to have
everything she does. I am amazed and sometimes kind of
like how can she send me notes of like her

(01:16:28):
capacity to forgive something? I really loved about her and
was like, wow, this is it just felt like very
unique and I was like, wow, men wrote this? Who
told them? Was that? How she clearly feels it's like
her last days and she feels the need or desire

(01:16:52):
to provide grace to people in her life, specifically Hanoh,
who has cheated on her. She has known about this
for a long time and she both doesn't want to
be with him and she doesn't want him to lose
her feeling that she is angry with him, but it's
killing her, and it's like it's so again, in a

(01:17:14):
lesser movie, it would be horrible because you would just
be conditioned to be like, oh, and women are inherently
graceful and women are forgiving and women are capable of
blah blah blah blah blah. But you can see and
I appreciate that the movie took the time to say
that she feels it is her choice to provide this grace,

(01:17:37):
but it is also very very painful for her. Yeah,
And that was like, I don't know, I appreciated them
showing both of those things.

Speaker 3 (01:17:47):
There's a lot of interesting, like you said, Jamie, like
there's this complexity that Luisa is written with that a
lot of women characters are not in a way that like, again,
in a lesser movie, if there was a female character
who was often crying as we do see Luisa do, yes,

(01:18:11):
you know, her pain wouldn't be contextualized, it would be
almost made a joke of like women are so emotional
and they're always crying over everything. But you come to
learn like why she's in all of this emotional pain
and this like push and pull of wanting to reclaim

(01:18:35):
her autonomy and like her freedom in her last weeks
of her life and you know, make active choices and
just like go on at an adventure almost while she
still can and pray. But she's also dealing with an
active breakup. She has left her partner, and she knows

(01:18:59):
what that's going to do to him, she knows how
much it is already hurting her. You know, there's all
these components.

Speaker 1 (01:19:08):
It's so hard because it's like I do think that
Louis some of her actions on its face, especially the
first quote unquote seduction is I think like actively coercive
at least where he comes in looking for shampoo and
she's like, no, take your towel. And I think that

(01:19:29):
based on our conversation, I don't think for you know,
two thousand and one or nineteen ninety nine, where the
movie is taking place, that we're supposed to feel like
this is a coercive situation. But I think on its face,
it is yeah, and I don't want to shy away
from that. And in the same way, we're given a full,
complicated context for this character that I feel like really

(01:19:51):
leaves it to the viewer to decide how they feel
about her actions. And I think every viewer is going
to feel some gradient about her actions based on their
own life experience because we are given I was like
impressed it the amount of information that we're given about Louisa.
Where she lost her parents young, she became the caretaker

(01:20:15):
of a sick relative who she loved very dearly, very young,
and that influenced the compromises she made throughout her life.
And it just doesn't seem like she has gotten to
have her big adventure and now she suddenly finds out
that her life is ending after having one serious relationship

(01:20:36):
that ended in a partner's death and a second serious
relationship that ended in devastating infidelity, and so it's there's
no like, I'm not trying to excuse her actions. And
I also think that we are given so much information
about the context of her actions that I just I

(01:21:00):
really love her, and it's like, in many ways, she
didn't have a shot at what she deserved to have,
and it seems like she knows that to an extent
and wants to end life on her own terms. And
I also really appreciate that this section where she is

(01:21:22):
hooking up with even if they're elder teenagers, that's objectively weird.
No matter where you're at in your life, it's objectively weird, Like,
at very least, it is weird.

Speaker 3 (01:21:34):
If you're an adult, you should not do anything with
anyone who is still in high school. I think that's
a rule to live by, regardless of how old they are,
especially if you've.

Speaker 1 (01:21:46):
Gotten to know them and you're like, yeah, they're obviously
kids spiritually.

Speaker 2 (01:21:52):
At some point, she says that she remembers him when
he was a kid and he was crying because he
wanted to the thundercut a thundercat.

Speaker 1 (01:22:02):
Yeah, right, Which is I feel like we most frequently
see that dynamic post against young girls in a sexualized way,
where it's like, I knew you when you were a child,
and now you are my.

Speaker 3 (01:22:17):
Wife grown up? How are we?

Speaker 2 (01:22:22):
When I think about it. It's also that back in
two thousand and when this movie was filmed, we never
thought about the older women being with younger boys. Or teenager. Yes,
spread there was a way. This is like a recent
conversation and maybe the writers weren't thinking about it that way,

(01:22:45):
which is a problem.

Speaker 1 (01:22:46):
But well that's the thing that, like I wrote down
in my notes because I watched the movie twice a
prep and like pretty like midway through the movie and
my first viewing as like as uncomfortable it is, I remembered,
like at my core that Louisa as a character that
I really liked throughout the movie. But if the gender

(01:23:09):
dynamics of this movie were flipped, I would have a
much harder time with this movie. And again I'm not
pro gender like flipping movies because that is very like
prescriptive in itself, but it was something I thought about

(01:23:29):
where I was like, if this was a man in
his late twenties early thirties at the end of his
life on a road trip with two teenage girls, would
I feel differently? And the answer was absolutely yes, I
would feel differently, And so I wanted to acknowledge that
in this episode because that is not the way this

(01:23:51):
movie was written, I think, very intentionally, but I think
it is important to consider the dynamics even.

Speaker 2 (01:23:57):
If it wasn't an older man with it would be weird.

Speaker 1 (01:24:01):
It would also be weird. Yeah, right, either.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
Way, you see it, it's weird.

Speaker 3 (01:24:09):
Yes, But I think you're right about the cultural climate
of the time did not perceive relationships between older women
and younger men are teen boys as predatory. It was
always framed as.

Speaker 1 (01:24:24):
Like sexy, look at these.

Speaker 3 (01:24:26):
Cool young studs, Like getting with this older woman, isn't
that awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:24:32):
There was an episode of Dozn't Screak? Do you remember that? Yes?

Speaker 3 (01:24:37):
Yes, I didn't watch that show.

Speaker 1 (01:24:41):
Oh god, I'm trying to think of There's a book
written by recent guests of the podcast Alyssa Nutting that
sort of examines this same dynamic. It's a book called
Tampa about an abuser, that is an adult woman who
abuses younger men. And so I think that like, it

(01:25:04):
is something that absolutely happens and is still not really
culturally understood because there is such a shame dynamic of like,
if you are a young man or a man in
general that has experienced sexual abuse from a woman, that
there is something emasculating about that versus something that is

(01:25:28):
just abusive.

Speaker 3 (01:25:29):
And the expectation that if you are a man, you
are just supposed to be so horny and so ready
at any time to receive the you know, sexual attention
of a woman because of like heteronormativity and just yeah,
that very harmful expectation that strips men of their agency

(01:25:54):
and their ability to withhold consent and say no.

Speaker 1 (01:25:58):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:25:58):
Yeah, My guess is the writers and the director were
not really thinking about any of that, And I'm guessing
they're like, well, we showed these guys as sexual beings.
The movie literally opens with one of them having sex,
and then moments later we see the other one have sex.
So I'm guessing they're like, oh, you know, this is

(01:26:21):
not predatory or abusive. They're sexual people. And they also
come on to her, like they approach her at the wedding,
they like almost comically charge at her, they like lunge
at her at the wedding. So they're probably like, all right,
we did enough to suggest that this was all totally
fine and consensual and blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (01:26:42):
So and Luisa is desperate also like yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:26:48):
Not that that excuses you know, predatory behavior, but yes,
she is acting out of desperation.

Speaker 2 (01:26:53):
Yes, she's like, oh, these guys are hitting on me.
They invited me to the beach. I have nothing else.

Speaker 3 (01:26:59):
She's nothing to lose. I mean, she's she knows she
will die soon, right, She's like, it's not an excuse.

Speaker 1 (01:27:05):
It does seem like before this was a cultural concept.
She's like, who's gonna cancel me if I'm dead? And
that does kind of seem like her vibe and like
and again, this is like the eternal not that we
find ourselves in on this show and in the world
where it is very difficult to rationalize a complex female

(01:27:31):
character that is written by two brothers. You're like, Okay,
this woman is not real and I love her, but
she is not real, and so it's difficult and I
have to keep reminding myself of that. But I guess
I want to like take a step back from what
the intention of the movie is because it's very hard
to know, I think, especially for me, because like I

(01:27:52):
am not these two gen X brothers, and I also
am not familiar with the dynamics in Mexico at this time,
and so with Luisa, like there are moments where Luisa
is really calling them out in a way that feels
very telling, and depending on how you view these dynamics

(01:28:14):
can kind of ring hollow. But I felt like Luisa
almost acts as and I'm curious if, however, feels about it,
because she knowingly enters this dynamic with these two teenagers
who she knows are kind of full of shit, and

(01:28:35):
I'm not convinced that she knows that they have a
destination in mind. When she gets in. She just wants
an adventure and that's great, and so she's like, I'm
going to get in the car and where we end
up is where we end up, fuck it and we'll
just see what happens. Yeah, But because she wants to
know about them and she wants them to know about her,
I feel like she ends up teasing out all of

(01:28:57):
these toxic qualities them and challenging them in a way
that we don't usually see in movies, where she asked
them like ways that I think KAPSI. It is pretty
creepy questions about Like again, if we flip the dynamics,
if we have a thirty something year old man asking

(01:29:17):
two teen girls how they have sex, I would be like, blitz,
get me out.

Speaker 3 (01:29:23):
Of here, not want to see it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:26):
But with these dynamics, it's like there's a way to
look at it where she's having them challenge their own
naive masculinity and trying to understand how they view women,
because they view women horribly throughout. And I think that
that's like one of the sad slash true things about
this movie is that I don't necessarily know that having

(01:29:49):
been on this journey improves to Notch and Julio's opinion
of women. I think that they just meet one that
they liked and then she died.

Speaker 2 (01:30:03):
No, they will be as whoso older lives.

Speaker 1 (01:30:07):
Yeah, and have.

Speaker 2 (01:30:09):
Proofs, but I have no doubt.

Speaker 1 (01:30:12):
We've all lived. We have theories.

Speaker 2 (01:30:14):
Then at the ending, the narrator says that they broke
up with their girlfriends as soon as they came back
from Italy, and the notes started seeing his neighbor right away,
and to Julio, it took him nine months to date someone.

Speaker 3 (01:30:34):
Yeah, I think there should be a sequel or just
like another movie in the Itomama Tambian cinematic universe that
follows Anna and Cecilia while they go around Europe having
fun adventures. And where's that movie? Anyway? Back to Luisa,

(01:30:55):
I wish that this like exploitative and predator dynamic was
absent from the movie because it would just make it
so much easier to like. But also, you know, women
are complicated too.

Speaker 1 (01:31:09):
But I don't even know if I want more movies
in this universe because it is so uniquely complicated to
this moment that you're just like, I don't know if
I want Quann to like try to course correct on
some of the more glaring aspects of this movie, Like,
they are what they are, and they're fucked in some ways,

(01:31:32):
and it's interesting to talk about it because of how
the world has changed. But I don't know, Luis is dead,
what are we gonna do? Honestly, I think normally at
the end of a movie, if you're like and the
woman does, you're like, well, that sucks, because that always
like the woman has served her purpose and now she

(01:31:54):
can disappear into vapor. But in this movie, I did
not feel that way. I felt like, independently, there are
two really strong narratives in this movie. One is Luis's
and one is the friendship between the two guys, and
they're both equally impactful. And again, I feel like when

(01:32:16):
I watched this movie for the first time, I was
way more invested in the guys, and in this time,
I am like Louisa coated and I'm way more invested
in Louisa.

Speaker 3 (01:32:27):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (01:32:27):
Same. And when I saw Way Back, I was like, oh,
they're so fun and I love them and I was
a teen movie, finally, a Mexican teen movie. And now
that I saw it, it's not a teen movie, right,
I mean it is, but it's not. It's a movie

(01:32:48):
about bands than growing up.

Speaker 1 (01:32:51):
But I think it's cool that it can be seen
as a teen movie too, Like there's so many layers
to it. It's like you can watch this movie as
a teenager and be like, oh, yeah, that's how teen
boys view teen girls generally based on my lived experience,
and then you can grow up and watch it and
be like, oh, they were trying to say something by

(01:33:14):
allowing those teen boys to talk about teen girls this way.
And I don't think that that excuses it, because again,
we only see what are their girlfriend's names, Anna and Cecilia. Yes,
at the very very beginning, and that is where it
passes the back to test normal. The two girls are
talking about like, I can't wait to be able to

(01:33:35):
plane and the other one's like, I know because they
I feel like it's implied that they're kind of also
sick of the guys.

Speaker 3 (01:33:43):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:33:44):
It passes when Louisa talks to the old woman and yes, yes,
and when Lisa talks to my Belle, yes, and before
the guys wake up, Louisa is having breakfast and she's
asking Mavela and her daughter about the names of the downs.

Speaker 3 (01:34:04):
Wow, it does feminist masterpiece.

Speaker 1 (01:34:08):
I mean there were moments. I mean, I'm not trying
to say that there were not moments where women connected
in this movie, but most of them were like not
thoroughly included on screen or like mostly told that they
had happened by the narrator. But I feel like that's
I think again. We most recently came across this specific

(01:34:29):
issue in our Virgin Suicides episode, where often many conversations
between girls or women were very fleeting because the main
narrator seemed to be an adult man remembering something and so,
which is like what the Virgin Suicides is, and that's

(01:34:52):
like part of why. And I think Louisa suffers from
this less But I do think to some degree where
it's like we don't know who the narrator is, but
they seem to be recalling something and they have some
godlike knowledge of what happens to these characters down the line,
or what has happened to anyone we encounter or any
place we encounter before we get there. That like it

(01:35:14):
is a man remembering or presenting something, and so sometimes
they will present what happens between women, and then we
only see what happens between women in kind of a
fleeting way, which is a weird specific thing. But yeah,
that's also the virgin suicides.

Speaker 3 (01:35:32):
Yeah, so, now that.

Speaker 2 (01:35:33):
I think about it, Anna and Cecilia weren't very good
friends either. They fucked each other's boyfriends.

Speaker 1 (01:35:39):
I mean, yeah, right, which I kind of like that
they like because it's like, I do think men have
an issue with infidelity, but I do think it's also
a human problem.

Speaker 2 (01:35:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:35:50):
Sure, I think everyone feels different about this, but I
like that there it was acknowledged that. It's like the
boys were so quick to be like, our girlfriends are faithful,
but if we are horny and want to cheat on them,
that's awesome. Like it's just like classic.

Speaker 3 (01:36:07):
It's a loud and it's great.

Speaker 1 (01:36:08):
Yeah, yeah, it's like classic misogyny one oh one, where
it's like if a woman does what I do, she's
a slut. But if I do what I do, I
fucking rule, which is very much their like creed. It's
like in their fucking creed.

Speaker 2 (01:36:23):
I was going to say that that's very Mexican, but
I think that's universal.

Speaker 1 (01:36:28):
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (01:36:29):
Yeah, just a few other things I want to shout
out about Luisa. I really liked the little narrative we
get mostly in voiceover that also sort of addresses her
class and circumstances, where again we learned that she had
to start taking care of an ill relative and she

(01:36:53):
had to become I think, like a dental technician. Yeah,
something like that when she was sixteen, and then she
met Hano not long after that, and then they got married,
so she didn't really have the opportunity to go to
university and get the education that Hano and all of
his friends have. Because there's the voiceover that explains how

(01:37:18):
she would be with them and they'd be talking about
you know, philosophy or politics, and either to earnestly try
to include her or with mal intent try to expose her,
they would you know, be like, oh, what do you
think about this quote unquote intellectual topic? And then she

(01:37:39):
would always say, you know, I don't know anything. About that,
and how she wished she could be like, well, yeah,
you were talking about all this fancy schmancy philosophy stuff,
but can you name all the teeth? And how just
like again, her circumstances led her to this situation where
she now can't help but feel insecure about the situation

(01:38:03):
she often finds herself in. And how again, that's like
just a relatable thing that a lot of people experience,
and I like that her character was enriched with that detail.
I love her monologue where she's being like, you guys
are babies and pigs and your hypocrites, and here's my manifesto.

(01:38:26):
If you want to keep hanging out with me, here's
everything you have to do. And just how she rattles
off all of these rules, I just thought was it's great.

Speaker 1 (01:38:36):
I loved it, and I also wasn't Maybe I'm in
a cynical phase of life, but like, I felt very
cathartic when she rattled off the rules, and I also
is very unsurprised when it blew up in her face
because men are horrible and that's a Missandra's statement that

(01:39:02):
I just made. But I just feel like she took
I think in a like twenty seventeen movie, it would
be like, I'm taking control of this now, and now
I make the rules and the history of patriarchy is
erased and everything works out in my favorite and you're
just like, well, what if we learned in the past

(01:39:22):
ten years. If not, it is more complicated than that,
and we have to engage with that idea in order
to make actual progress. I don't know, I'm bringing a
very twenty twenty three thought process to that. But it
was interesting that this two thousand and one movie was like,
I'm taking control of this. Oh, you're still driving the car,
you still have the power, you still have the class

(01:39:45):
dynamic OVERB and I can want this and still have
to try another way to live the way that I
want to live. Right, I hate it, but also it
feels accurate.

Speaker 2 (01:40:01):
Yeah, also unpopular opinion. She takes charge just after the
two teenage boys do what teenage boys do is like, well,
you kind of know what you were getting into.

Speaker 1 (01:40:15):
Well, I think again, it's like I think that if
the gender dynamics were swapped, that would be like what
we would automatically say. Right, It's like she is very
much an adult woman who I don't know. Yeah, like
in that moment, you're like, we know, well, I guess
we don't technically know that she is going to die.

(01:40:37):
But again, I mean, maybe I'm just using my big
old thirty year old brain to be like, yeah, I
knew she's gonna die, but it felt pretty clear that
like she was not acting normally in this situation. This
is not something she would do every day.

Speaker 2 (01:40:55):
Yeah, and the movie wants to trick you into thinking
that she's doing everything because Hano cheated on her. And
then the yeah, the twist comes.

Speaker 3 (01:41:06):
M hmm, which I think is excellent screenwriting because even
though we see this scene that foreshadows the information that
she passes away because we see her at the doctor's
office and the doctor kind of like ominously closes the
door like right in the camera's face, And once you
find out what happens to her at the end, you're like, oh, yeah,
that was foreshadowing. But what seems to be the function

(01:41:29):
of that scene is her taking that quiz at the
doctor's office and like learning about how much she's a
strong independent woman, which I think is like a brilliant
piece of screenwriting because it's like all of these things
are happening the audience is tricked into thinking that one
function is being served, but it's also like multiple things

(01:41:51):
are happening and being foreshadowed, and you don't realize all
of it until the very end. And it's great writing.

Speaker 2 (01:41:58):
Kaitlyn, you know so much about screenwriting. Why is that?

Speaker 3 (01:42:01):
Oh my gosh, I wonder why. Well, it wouldn't be
because I got a master's degree in screenwriting from Boston University,
because I would not mention that.

Speaker 1 (01:42:10):
Surely there's no way Audrianta had knowledge of this, So
that's like incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:42:15):
I had no idea it and.

Speaker 1 (01:42:17):
Now I've learned no id.

Speaker 3 (01:42:19):
Yeah, anyway, but yeah, I feel like all of this
space too, Like I think that this is a movie
that is like I want to watch it again in
another ten years and see how I feel about it then,
because it's again like I know, the difference between twenty
and thirty is big, but it's like, my feelings about

(01:42:41):
this movie changed drastically, not just because of like my
stage of life, but just because of the world and
because of the basic knowledge that I had about countries
that were not the one I grew up in.

Speaker 1 (01:42:55):
And this is a really fascinating movie to come back
to and I'm looking forward to coming back to it again.
And I also think that like we've touched on that
multiple times, but I guess I just wanted to say
one more time that I think that very often in
coming of age movies about young men, that they speak

(01:43:17):
very dismissively and objectively and horribly about young women in
their life in a way that is deeply uncritical, and
present it as if like, well, of course we all
feel this way. I think that's like how movies about
young men have been presented for generations. And I appreciate

(01:43:41):
that while the young men in this movie do speak
horrifically about women consistently, and I would say basically right
to the very end of the movie, I think it
is presented in a critical way, and it is presented
in a way that is like, not only is the

(01:44:02):
way that these young men view the women around them
oppressive and horrible and offensive and insulting, it is also
preventing them from being people. And it's like, I feel
like it presents it in a way that because we
do care about Tanaje and about Julio, it's like a

(01:44:26):
far more difficult thing to grapple with where you're like
you're almost dealing with masculinity and patriarchy as a concept
as opposed to like patriarchy the guy, which we're always
talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:44:38):
Right true. Also, Jamie, not to call you out, but
you sound so tired because I know it's like late
where you are.

Speaker 1 (01:44:45):
I'm sorry, it's ten twenty two pm, and I am
horizontal to sound horizontal because I am leave this in.
I want people to know. You know how hard I
work so horizontally this show.

Speaker 3 (01:45:02):
I actively have COVID right now, I know, and look
at us working so hard to bring people the Bechdel Castle.
I just mentioned that because we should wrap up soon.
But just a rapid fire list of little things I
want to say. I love when they toast to the glitters?

Speaker 1 (01:45:24):
Uh that's her last supper?

Speaker 3 (01:45:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:45:27):
Oh she toasted the glitter? Is that her last supper?

Speaker 3 (01:45:30):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:45:30):
What marked you watch?

Speaker 3 (01:45:32):
Damn right? I think it's hilarious that Julio named his
dick resputant. So Jamie, that's something that's a little treat
for you.

Speaker 1 (01:45:42):
I feel like I appreciate it as a respute and
head right.

Speaker 3 (01:45:46):
I love that you get horny women representation because between
Anna Cecilia and Luisa they're horny and I love to
see it. And then I guess the final thing I
want to touch on briefly is just comparing American movies

(01:46:07):
representation of Mexico versus a Mexican director in his Portrait
of Mexico, and how widely different they are, because in
so many, like Hollywood movies, Mexico is depicted as this
like homogeneous, dangerous, just all of these like things that

(01:46:28):
carry all these horrible connotations. And I don't know how
much we've dived into this in the show, but that
like yellow filter that often is placed anytime characters go
to anywhere in Latin America. This also happens when characters
go to the Middle East, just to sort of suggest, like, oh,

(01:46:49):
what a foreign land we're in, and isn't it so bizarre?
And then when you have filmmakers who are handling their
own stories and setting a movie in their own country,
the difference is night and day. When you have someone
who is taking the time to represent and paint a

(01:47:11):
portrait of their home with respect and nuance, the way
that again so many Hollywood movies do not bother to
do when setting a scene or a whole movie in
another country, so I just wanted to touch on that.

Speaker 2 (01:47:30):
Yeah, I love that too. I love that there is
a movie out there that is about high school students
that came out when I was a high school student
and I had these road trips. I was a nerd,
so they were more boring that this road trip. But yeah,

(01:47:51):
I went to a couple go with friends and stay
at these really cheap hotels, and it brings out many
memories and that's the way I spoke, That's the way
I lived my life. So it's a movie about people
like me, well not me me, because I was more

(01:48:13):
like Sicilianana, but more like people I knew. And I'm
really grateful to go on for giving my generation a
movie about about us and how we grew up and
how we saw the country change from having like these
guys dictatorship and seeing it turned into a democracy. And

(01:48:36):
we were so hopeful when that happened. When the same
political party lost, everyone was shocked and happy and hopeful.
And if you want to know what came next, read
the news. Read the book wasn't very good. So it's
like a portrait of that moment when people like me

(01:48:56):
were finishing high school, becoming an adult and the country
was becoming a democracy and all that hopefulness. It's portrait
in this film, and I love it and it has
its problems. Yeah, And also Diego and Guyle in Mexico,
we're so proud of them. We love them so much.

(01:49:16):
I mean, I don't think I speak for all of Mexico,
but they've done so much for Mexican cinema because they
all the money they earn in Hollywood, they spend in
producing good movies in Mexico, and they have they have festivals,
they pay for festivals, and they bring those festivals to
all all of Mexico. And and they're like unproblematic as

(01:49:42):
far as I know.

Speaker 3 (01:49:43):
We always have to say, as far as we know
at the time of this record, they're okay to like.

Speaker 2 (01:49:49):
As far as I know, they're unproblematic, and they're really
cool and they help a lot of the community and
they have nonprofits and I love them so much both.
It was my favorite way too.

Speaker 3 (01:50:02):
Oh my gosh, they're the best. Yes, we already talked
about the movie passing the Bechdel test in the specific ways,
So shall we just move on to the Nipple scale,
our famous Lawless scale on which we rate the movie
based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens zero

(01:50:25):
to five nipples. I suppose I would kind of do
like the Bechdel cast cheat code and sort of split
this down the middle, because, as we've discussed, I think
it does a lot of interesting things to examine a
really complicated and extremely grounded and authentic male friendship and

(01:50:50):
the way that high school boys tend to be and
how they especially in this era of like the early
I guess this was taking place in the late nineties,
Like attitudes towards women. They're very casually throwing around homophobic
slurs and calling each other homophobic slurs. They make disparaging

(01:51:14):
remarks about sex workers and different things like that, Like
these are classic late nineties teen boys. But the movie
is examining that in a way that feels critical, and
often by way of Luisa calling them out for their

(01:51:35):
behavior and their toxicity and fragility and things like that.
I don't even want to get back into the whole
age gap dilemma, but it is there, and it does
cast a big nasty cloud over the movie for me.
But yeah, if you're able to set that aside, Luisa

(01:51:56):
as a character is a really cool, well rounded, dynamic,
interesting character that again we don't often see afforded to
women in movies. So there's a lot of things going on,
some good, some bad. Again the centering of like these
white characters, and only while it does point out and

(01:52:21):
tell little vignettes about other characters that they encounter or
you know, pan over to an indigenous person, the movie
is still centering these young, privileged people. So two point
five nipples, and I'll give one to my first husband,

(01:52:43):
Gail Garcier Brnal, I'll give my second nipple to my
other husband, Diego Luna, and I'll give my half nipple,
and I should just give all two and a half
to Marbelle verdu So. Two and a half nipples and
the cast gets them.

Speaker 1 (01:53:05):
Yeah, I'm gonna go. I'll round it up to three.
For this movie, I think that the two things that
are most challenging for me is the very ambiguous age gap,
at least in the translation that I watch, regardless of
her life circumstance, which is dire and we know that,

(01:53:25):
but it's like there is a very predatory way to
look at the dynamics in this movie, and I don't
want to shy away from that because it is a
woman with two young men, because I feel like that
is a very common thing that the culture at large
is still struggling with, and I don't want to reduce that.
And I think it is complicated by the fact that

(01:53:47):
this is a fictional woman like and I say older women,
but a woman who could very well be younger than
everyone on this call, like, written by two adult men
in their forties. And so there is the complication of
when we have women characters written by men that you're
just like, I cannot judge all of society by how

(01:54:10):
these two brothers chose to write this woman who doesn't exist.
It becomes a clusterfuck. However, that dynamic is very real,
and especially in like one specific twenty minute chunk of
the movie, it was uncomfortable, and I don't want to
shy away from feeling uncomfortable about it because I feel
like that is inherent to it. That was difficult for me.

(01:54:33):
And then I think the other part is a little
trickier for me because it does center white characters in
a way that is more mindful of what these upper
class white characters are ignoring or are you know, sort
of empowered to ignore. It is acknowledging that in a

(01:54:57):
way that I don't think I I've seen in a
way that didn't feel pandering or condescending in any other
teen movie, coming of age movie, road trip movie that
I can think of off the top of my head.
And so I think that it is sort of doing
a lot of what we've seen in movies at the

(01:55:19):
genre before, but doing it at a higher level, a
more thoughtful level, and in a way that didn't feel
as fucked up or totally just erasing people. And that's
not to say that it is perfect. It definitely isn't,
which is part of why it is losing two nipples

(01:55:40):
in my estimation. So I'm going three nipples. Rip Luisa
shoes a real one. She deserves better. And I too
feel like foam ocean blah blah blah whatever. I do
feel like this is something that I am going to
figure out at some later point. But I feel like,
very often I just want to like examine last words

(01:56:03):
in cinema because I have a feeling that most of
them mean basically nothing nothing. But it could be a
translation issue here, but in this one, I was like,
what the hell is she on about? And I can't
ask her because she was never real and also she's
fictionally dead. So anyways, I guess I'm giving one nipple

(01:56:25):
to each member of the main cast because all of
these dynamics, aside the performances in this movie are is like,
universally unbelievable, So one to each awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:56:37):
I'm gonna give it three. One for Maribelle Verdo, who
is also in Pants Labyrinth, Yes, yes, and who is
also in Flash.

Speaker 3 (01:56:51):
Oh yeah, that's right, really mom?

Speaker 2 (01:56:54):
Yeah, oh I've.

Speaker 1 (01:56:55):
Never seen that.

Speaker 3 (01:56:56):
Well it's that DC movie that came out.

Speaker 1 (01:56:58):
Oh it was the had One. Well that's not her
fault that Ezra Miller's a fucking evil criminal.

Speaker 2 (01:57:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:57:05):
Okay, well now we know she.

Speaker 2 (01:57:08):
Has to hug as Remiller in the movie.

Speaker 1 (01:57:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:57:12):
I hope they paid her me too. Yeah. One for
Marievelle and one for both Chardo Lustras because in Mexico
we still call them lost Chao Lastras we kept the
nickname nice. And one for the pigs the pigs, yes,

(01:57:33):
the camp We leave the pigs alone.

Speaker 1 (01:57:36):
They did nothing wrong, they.

Speaker 2 (01:57:38):
Did nothing wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:57:39):
They're just being pigs.

Speaker 2 (01:57:40):
They were just being pigs.

Speaker 1 (01:57:42):
Leave my feral hogs alone.

Speaker 2 (01:57:44):
Yeah, and I think I agree with what you say.
I mean, there's only one woman as the main character
in this movie, and the rest of the women come
and go. But for two thousand and one to be
a movie about toxic masculinity and the way it still
holds up at least that part, the way it criticizes

(01:58:09):
their friendship and the hypocrisy and the shallowness. Is that
a word shallowness?

Speaker 3 (01:58:16):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:58:16):
Yeah, did I just made it up? No, shallowness, the
shallowness of their friendship? Yeah, I think it that part
at least holds up very well, and I hope more
men think about it.

Speaker 1 (01:58:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:58:32):
I wish more men learn something from that movie, because
I still know a bunch of people who are in
their thirties and forties whose friendship are still like that,
and I'm like, what.

Speaker 3 (01:58:44):
Are you doing?

Speaker 1 (01:58:46):
No, we can do nothing to help them. They have
to find out on their own. Yeah, Oh my gosh. Well, Aldrena,
thank you so much for coming on truly to cover
this wonderful and extremely complicated movie. Really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:59:04):
Thank you guys for inviting me. This is a dream.
I've been a fan of the Vecnyl cast since I
lived in Mexico. I wish I could go back to
the past until past Adriana driving her car to work
listening to the vecnel cast that someday she's gonna be
in it. This has been wonderful. Thank you. I admire

(01:59:26):
you both so much. You guys are great.

Speaker 1 (01:59:30):
Likewise, thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:59:31):
Thank you, and tell us what you'd like to plug.
And may I say before you even do that, that
I would like to give a ringing endorsement to Adriana's
Spanish tutoring. If you want to improve your Spanish or
start learning Spanish or anything like that, I highly recommend

(01:59:54):
Adriana's classes and services and she's incredible, so take them anyway. Adriana,
what would you like to plug?

Speaker 2 (02:00:04):
Yeah, I'm on Instagram at Espanol. That's E s P
A n O L C O n A b R
I N A A. Maybe you can put it in
the show notes.

Speaker 1 (02:00:22):
Yeah, don't.

Speaker 2 (02:00:24):
Yeah, you can find me on Instagram and you can
DM me if you're interested. I can teach in person
around the LA area or through zoom wherever you are.
I think Kaitlin has a good experience.

Speaker 3 (02:00:41):
See hell yeah, yeah, Well, thank you again so much
for joining us, and come back anytime please. You can
follow us on all of those horrible social media platforms.

Speaker 1 (02:00:54):
You can find us at back Podcasts.

Speaker 3 (02:00:56):
You'll find it there. And then we've got our our
Matreon at patreon dot com slash spctel cast, where you,
for five dollars a month can have access to two
bonus episodes every month, plus the entire back catalog, and
we always have just amazing, hilarious, awesome themes that should

(02:01:20):
be nominated for awards, you know, and.

Speaker 1 (02:01:23):
You know, I think history will give us a word
for that, but unfortunately we would be rip'd by that time.
We will be yeah, and the cities we currently live
in will be underwater. However, while we are above ground,
you can get our merch at deepublic dot com slash
bechtel cast. And with that, let's all meet up in

(02:01:48):
a diner. But this time, let's continue to speak to
each other. We're changing, we're changing things this time, and
we are actually gonna get that coffee absolutely.

Speaker 3 (02:02:04):
Bye, Adios

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