The scene which I’d most like to discuss from Y tu mamá también runs roughly from 1:19:08 to 1:20:04. In this scene Chuy, Tenoch, and Julio play soccer on the beach. The sequence begins with Chuy, back to the camera, in the foreground as Julio and Tenoch wrestle for the ball in the waves. Although Chuy is stationary and not yet involved in the action of the game, he is in focus. Chuy provides commentary as the boys play but, because his back is to the camera, we are not able to directly connect his speech to the movements of his mouth. We then move to a wide shot that shows Chuy and the boys against the beach backdrop as Chuy yells, urging his opponents to shoot the ball. The next shot—a full shot—shows Julio and Tenoch setting up to shoot the ball. A single shot shows Chuy preparing for his save, jumping to catch the ball, and tumbling to the ground. Chuy celebrates, proclaiming himself/Campos (the soccer player who he is “playing”) a “national hero” as he kneels on the sand, ball in hand. Julio and Tenoch laugh and Chuy looks to them asking, “What? Don’t you like Campos?”
This scene stuck out to me for a number of reasons. In her article “Provincia in Recent Mexican Cinema, 1989-2004”, Emily Hind asserts the “usefulness of the provincia to stage national metaphors” (30). One of the ways in which this operates is to force proximity between otherwise disparate groups. In several of the frames from this scene, middle-class Julio, rich Tenoch, and poor fisherman Chuy appear all together, creating a sort of national microcosm. The feeling of national metaphor is strengthened by Chuy’s soccer commentary which imagines himself and the boys as Mexican national soccer players. I think that sports feature heavily in national imagination and that this moment serves to emphasize that. However, it also suggests that proximity isn’t enough to unite the three men from different backgrounds, something more must act on them in order for them to stand in for the nation. This seemed to me like an interesting extension of Anderson’s statement that the nation is “imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (7). This scene suggests that even in the unlikely instances where we meet our fellow country-men, there is still ideological work to be done in order to unite us with them. Y tu mamá también shows one of the ways in which this “communion” can occur.
I was also struck by the decision to open this scene with a shot of Chuy from behind. Because we are unable to see Chuy speaking, his voice is (at least momentarily) disembodied. This was interesting to me because of the role the omniscient narrator plays in Y tu mamá también. The narrator throughout the film provides and intertwines cultural and personal context for the images on screen—describing the political landscape as the characters move through the physical one. In the few seconds before we realize it is Chuy delivering the commentary, Chuy occupies the same aural position as this narrator. Hind understands the narrative voiceover in Y tu mamá también as one that “calls attention to misleading appearances” (39). This renders Chuy’s brief occupation of this space complex, especially when considering form and content together. Chuy’s commentary is decidedly invested in the imagination of nation (emphasized when he declares himself a “national hero” upon blocking the shot). While this does not stand in direct opposition to the role of the narrator, who often problematizes nation, it does have a very different feel. I think there is also a collapsing of appearances and reality at the moment in which Chuy challenges the boys’ laughter, asking them, “What? You don’t like Campos?” By inhabiting Campos without changing his appearance, Chuy draws further attention to the gap between things by deliberately collapsing it. This is very different from the work the narrator does throughout, which serves to highlight this gap by opening it wider.
I am curious about a number of other things—not all of them related to this specific scene.
I’m interested in how other people experienced the temporality of Y tu mamá también. There is an absence of flashbacks and a generally direct, linear chronology. However, the voiceover looks both forward and backward in time. Does this work to create a heightened awareness of the duality (perhaps multiplicity) of film chronology?
Some of the driving sequences were reminiscent of Godard’s Weekend—though with less honking, thank god—in that the passengers in both cars bear witness to a number of different violent scenes. How can we consider some of these moments together? Do they operate in the same way? Does the engagement/non-engagement of the passengers with the oftentimes violent scenery shape our reading?
Because the ocean was featured so heavily, I was also reminded of Atlantics. I am interested in the interplay between beaches and borders particularly in the context of Anderson’s Imagined Communities. Anderson states that the nation is limited, encompassed by “finite, if elastic, boundaries beyond which lie other nations” (7). It seems to me that the beach serves to represent both this finitude and elasticity. How can we consider this in the light of the overall “quest” in Y tu mamá también or with specific reference to this beach soccer scene?