Luisa y Los Charolastras: A Document Analysis of the Film

‘Y tu Mama Tambien’

by Rufus Rey C. Montecalvo

Having just been from the airport saying their farewells to their girlfriends bound for

Europe, the two friends get temporarily stuck in a traffic jam caused by a car hitting

and killing a construction worker who did not use the overpass. The characters do

not know this. But those watching the movie know this because the narrator of the

movie tells them. We are made to feel that while these two pot-smoking decadent

kids are having fun, the breadwinner of some poor family back in some isolated

village somewhere lies dead on the side of the street. The movie, through the use of

this narrative device, provides us with a panoramic view of the social and political

landscape of Mexico. We are presented with the lives of two teenage boys – Julio,

who hails from a middle-class family with leftist leanings and Tenoch whose father is

a high-ranking official in the Mexican government, and that of the Spanish Luisa

who is in her late 20s, married to Tenoch’s uncle, and whom they met while in a

wedding party attended by the President of Mexico himself.

One night Luisa calls Tenoch and asks him if they could still go on that roadtrip to

that wonderful beach Tenoch was talking about in the wedding party. What

prompted Luisa to call up Tenoch was that her husband had just confessed to her

tearfully on the phone that he was cheating on her. She broke down and wanted to

go away. Later we learn that Luisa knew of her husband’s infidelities all along and

that all she was doing was waiting for him to change. Tenoch says yes, fully aware

that he just made the beach story up in order to impress her. He then calls up Julio

who asks his activist sister for her car, and so the roadtrip begins.
Luisa is dying of cancer and she does not tell anyone about this. Instead, while in

the car, she bonds with the boys by responding to their questions regarding her sex

life. They tell her about their girlfriends, about how they are worried that they would

end up with some Italian dudes up there in Europe where they are vacationing right

now. They tell her of the code of the Charolastras, a word meaning ‘astral cowboy’

which they coined themselves to describe their pot-smoking, partying, and basically

hedonistic lifestyle. Its tenets include smoking marijuana and being loyal to other

Charolastras. Luisa smiles and laughs with them, recounting her teenage life. Only

her past life as a teenager was not as wonderful as theirs. She tells them the first

time she had sex and how she at first did not like it. The boys shriek and laugh. And

then she tells them, amidst the laughter how her boyfriend later died in a motorbike

accident. He was seventeen years old. Their laughter dissolves and we see Luisa’s

gaze drift off into the dry scenery outside.

Of all the characters in the movie, the only likeable one, at least in my opinion, is

Luisa. She possesses that mixture of beauty and sadness that poets throughout the

centuries have found tragically irresistible. There is a charm about her and the fact

that she’s nearing death only adds to the poignancy of the character. She sees a

value in the experiences they have that the boys cannot because she is nearing her

death. Luisa is more aware of the ephemeral nature of things. This theme of

ephemerality we see in the relationships that the three characters have. Luisa’s

marriage breaks down. The girlfriends of Tenoch and Julio both break up with them

once they arrive from Europe. Death is also a constant theme, as evidenced not just

by Luisa’s impending death but by all those other deaths we encounter throughout

the movie. The narrator tells us the death of a girl who along with her parents tried

to cross the US – Mexico border years ago. There are also visual references to this
theme – roadsides that are marked with sticks in the shape of a cross to indicate

some death that occurred in that place in some unknown time.

This smaller theatre in which the three characters move is connected to the larger

setting by the narrator. The narrator for example, tells us that this certain place

where the characters are currently passing through is the place where Tenoch’s

nanny came from and where she moved away from when she was thirteen years old

in order to find a job.

This narrative technique was used in a rather amusing way when Julio accidentally

witnessed Tenoch having sex with Luisa in the motel room. The narrator said that

Julio have not felt that way since that time when he was just a kid and accidentally

saw his mother and some guy have sex while his father was away. Later, in order to

take revenge on Tenoch, Julio tells him that he slept with his girlfriend. The narrator

then tells us that Tenoch has not felt that way, upon hearing those words, since that

time his family had to go outside of the country because his father was involved in a

political scandal regarding the selling of contaminated food to the poor.

The film is a presentation of the intermingling of the natural beauty of the Mexican

landscape and the socioeconomic distress that the majority of the people are under.

It begs us to take a look at those things that are at the periphery of our view – the

poor immigrants, the contractual workers, the nannies, the janitors, etc, those that

are forced to move someplace else in order to provide those whom they love with

something to eat. All of this are in the background of a roadtrip story between two

Charolastras and a Spanish lady named Luisa.