Y Tu Mamá También with Adriana Ortega

00:00:00
Speaker 1: 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?

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

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

00:00:16
Speaker 3: 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?

00:00:25
Speaker 2: Hmmm?

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

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

00:00:36
Speaker 1: 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.

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

00:00:53
Speaker 1: 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?

00:01:11
Speaker 3: 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 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, that was gross. I'm sorry, No, it's good. It's what are they They scallops? They have some different types of seafood.

00:02:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, yeah, we have to have a meadi seafood y kind of conversation.

00:02:09
Speaker 3: Exactly.

00:02:11
Speaker 2: Nice.

00:02:11
Speaker 3: 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 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.

00:02:54
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm so excited to be here.

00:02:57
Speaker 1: Well go, we're so start to have Yeah.

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

00:03:08
Speaker 3: But be patients with me, of course.

00:03:12
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I love this movie. It's very important to me.

00:03:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, tell us about your relationship with the movie.

00:03:21
Speaker 2: 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 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.

00:04:02
Speaker 1: Every parent has to at some point for some reason.

00:04:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we loved it. We quoted the movie. It was like, I don't know our American pie.

00:04:13
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I don't know.

00:04:14
Speaker 2: 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 as girls, as young teenage girls, seeing Diego and Guile was.

00:04:44
Speaker 3: Like, oh, oh my god, it's sickening, unfair, attractive those men are.

00:04:52
Speaker 2: They're so beautiful and they were so young. They were so young now that I see it, they had baby face.

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

00:05:01
Speaker 2: Do that.

00:05:03
Speaker 1: 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.

00:05:15
Speaker 2: 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.

00:05:29
Speaker 1: Wow.

00:05:29
Speaker 2: 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 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.

00:06:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, suddenly they're naked and they're masturbating and they're kissing each other spoiler alert.

00:06:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, and acting like so good.

00:06:20
Speaker 3: They're such good actor. Yeah.

00:06:23
Speaker 2: 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 Expectations with When It Through and it and.

00:06:49
Speaker 1: I've not seen that.

00:06:50
Speaker 2: 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.

00:07:12
Speaker 3: He had also directed The Little Princess before this.

00:07:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I didn't.

00:07:18
Speaker 4: 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.

00:07:30
Speaker 1: 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.

00:07:46
Speaker 3: I don't know, true, Jamie, what is your relationship with Ittomoma Dumbion?

00:07:52
Speaker 1: 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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.

00:10:11
Speaker 3: 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.

00:10:19
Speaker 5: 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.

00:10:33
Speaker 1: 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, 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 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 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 is an interesting movie to revisit, Caitlin, what's your history?

00:12:02
Speaker 3: 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 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 huge and Or head, I think I just need to enter a throuple with the two of them.

00:12:51
Speaker 1: I haven't seen Ander yet, Audrina, have you seen it yet?

00:12:54
Speaker 2: It's so good, damn it.

00:12:56
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, I'm alone and not having seen Andrew, I do have to watch.

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

00:13:01
Speaker 2: It's the best Star Wars product that has ever come out.

00:13:06
Speaker 3: 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, 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 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 I'm excited to get into it. So let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for the recap. 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 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 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 in front of each other as a goof.

00:15:43
Speaker 1: 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.

00:15:56
Speaker 2: You're wearing a right, your whole personality is driving a weird car.

00:16:04
Speaker 1: You're like, I've seen this guy, yeah, and I've fallen in love with this guy.

00:16:09
Speaker 2: Yeah. Of course that's when my notes I hades and these guys, Oh.

00:16:14
Speaker 1: My god, they're so unlike the other guys we think at the time.

00:16:18
Speaker 3: 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 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.

00:16:53
Speaker 1: 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 out of high school, so this is the end of their junior year of high school there.

00:17:19
Speaker 2: 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 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 he doesn't want to be on Area three. So that's how we know they're about to start their senior year.

00:18:08
Speaker 1: I say, okay, got it.

00:18:09
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, we'll dive into an age gap later on.

00:18:15
Speaker 1: But anyway, god damn it.

00:18:18
Speaker 2: 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.

00:18:35
Speaker 3: Okay, let's pretend that that's true for the sake of our ability to enjoy the events that transpire.

00:18:43
Speaker 1: 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.

00:18:53
Speaker 3: 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 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, 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 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 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.

00:20:32
Speaker 1: Mouth, which is a great joke.

00:20:34
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:20:35
Speaker 1: 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 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.

00:21:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, we are not meant to sympathize with him.

00:21:10
Speaker 1: 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.

00:21:17
Speaker 3: 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 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 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 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 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 off is awesome.

00:23:10
Speaker 1: 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.

00:23:24
Speaker 2: But two of them repeat, Yeah, they hate what is it?

00:23:28
Speaker 3: The like American club football?

00:23:34
Speaker 2: 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.

00:23:50
Speaker 1: Felt that way based on Hanning yea.

00:23:55
Speaker 2: But my family is they like America, so we're on the other side.

00:24:02
Speaker 3: 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, 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 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 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 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.

00:25:48
Speaker 1: 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.

00:26:08
Speaker 3: And they like are slut shaming their girlfriends. Yeah, like using really disparaging language. Yeah.

00:26:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we'll come back to it, but yeah.

00:26:19
Speaker 3: 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 back seat.

00:26:42
Speaker 1: 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.

00:26:52
Speaker 3: 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 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, 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 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. 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. 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 multiple times, and then Julio is like, itu mama tambien, meaning I had sex with your mom, also hence the name of the movie.

00:29:17
Speaker 1: And at this point they're like woo.

00:29:20
Speaker 3: 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, but I'm like, I remember this being way more I don't know, like pornographical most than it is.

00:29:51
Speaker 1: 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.

00:30:00
Speaker 3: 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 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 with them, or.

00:30:44
Speaker 1: 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 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?

00:31:23
Speaker 2: No, Yeah, I think Hannah they didn't know. And she finds out like right before the trip. So she finds that.

00:31:31
Speaker 3: 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 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, 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.

00:32:36
Speaker 2: 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 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 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 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.

00:34:06
Speaker 3: 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.

00:34:20
Speaker 2: 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 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 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.

00:35:24
Speaker 3: Not in the mainstream. No, I mean, that's not dissimilar from American cinema.

00:35:30
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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 way that is, like I think better than a lot of movies try to discuss masculinity.

00:37:06
Speaker 6: Now, yes, it's yeah, I agree, And I think we've talked about this before in different episodes.

00:37:17
Speaker 3: 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 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 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 absolutely but they're also the one recognize that they're like yeah, like they're.

00:38:29
Speaker 1: 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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.

00:40:52
Speaker 2: 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, 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 the PRE and their reign is ending.

00:41:42
Speaker 3: The castle is crumbling, and they.

00:41:46
Speaker 2: 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 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.

00:42:22
Speaker 3: Yeah I didn't mention it in the recap, but yeah, he's there, and.

00:42:26
Speaker 2: 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 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.

00:43:02
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

00:45:32
Speaker 3: 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. 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. 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 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.

00:47:00
Speaker 2: 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. And yeah, so while he's treating his nanny like garbage, he's wearing the face of an indigenous leader in his tea shirt.

00:47:32
Speaker 3: Okay, hypocrisy, sir.

00:47:36
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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 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.

00:49:21
Speaker 2: And this is in my notes. Julio's his underwear, he's always wearing like tidy whities.

00:49:29
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:49:30
Speaker 2: 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 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.

00:50:14
Speaker 1: Like those like roughly yeah.

00:50:18
Speaker 2: 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 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?

00:50:54
Speaker 1: Is this what translates to hill billy?

00:50:58
Speaker 3: The version I had watched. The English translation translated it to hick. So he's like, Oh, you're such a hick?

00:51:04
Speaker 2: What's a hicks?

00:51:07
Speaker 1: 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.

00:51:15
Speaker 2: 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.

00:51:35
Speaker 3: He's been like holding it back their whole friendship. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:51:39
Speaker 2: 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 they build up to this moment.

00:52:03
Speaker 3: 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 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 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.

00:53:03
Speaker 1: Sorry it's my hilarious joke.

00:53:05
Speaker 3: Oh sorry, what was it said?

00:53:06
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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 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 at least think about what it would be like to be able to identify safely as queer in some way.

00:55:05
Speaker 2: Because in that last scene, they're asking about people they know. They ask about Savah.

00:55:12
Speaker 3: Yeah that is the stoner friend.

00:55:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, the stoner friend, the.

00:55:17
Speaker 1: Guy who gives them the bad map.

00:55:19
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

00:55:20
Speaker 2: 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.

00:55:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's happy because he has a boyfriend and you know, the romantic relationship will fix all your problems.

00:55:44
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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, and it's presented non judgmentally. But I don't know. Yeah, I feel like the specter of Danielle was really interesting to me.

00:57:18
Speaker 2: 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 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.

00:58:01
Speaker 3: Brad, I'm so jealous.

00:58:05
Speaker 2: 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 going to study, that's how you know that that they will.

00:58:30
Speaker 3: That they never be friends again. They they're on very different paths.

00:58:35
Speaker 1: 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.

00:58:56
Speaker 2: And have you read about the names the character's names.

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

00:59:02
Speaker 2: 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 Itorde was like another historical figure, but he was like a rich historical figure, like another revolutionary, but like a high class person.

00:59:40
Speaker 1: And like the privileged.

00:59:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like a rich revolutionary. I should have read more about these characters before telling you this, but.

00:59:50
Speaker 1: We know nothing. So this is great.

00:59:53
Speaker 2: But Louis's last name is Cortes. It is the last name of ernand Cortez, that like the biggest conquistador.

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

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

01:00:09
Speaker 2: 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 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 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.

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

01:01:16
Speaker 2: 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.

01:01:25
Speaker 3: 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 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 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 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 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.

01:03:14
Speaker 2: 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.

01:03:31
Speaker 3: 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 and like you know, Christian values onto the indigenous population. Versus in the northern part of North America, it was more just eradication.

01:04:09
Speaker 2: 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.

01:04:32
Speaker 1: 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 arc or story. It's just to tell us where we are versus give us a character.

01:06:48
Speaker 2: 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 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.

01:07:32
Speaker 1: 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. 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.

01:08:09
Speaker 2: 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 not his stories.

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

01:08:38
Speaker 2: 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.

01:08:53
Speaker 1: 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 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, 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.

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

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

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

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

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

01:10:11
Speaker 1: 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. 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.

01:10:56
Speaker 3: 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, 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 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.

01:11:56
Speaker 1: 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.

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

01:12:12
Speaker 3: 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.

01:12:25
Speaker 1: 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.

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

01:12:50
Speaker 1: 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 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 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, you know, twenty three, twenty two, twenty three, and they're young, but they're you know, consenting adults that are just dufases.

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

01:14:05
Speaker 1: 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. But because of their dynamic, it just gets it gets really fucking in a.

01:14:34
Speaker 3: 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 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 older woman. I feel like is how everything is framed, and.

01:15:24
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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.

01:17:47
Speaker 3: 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, 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 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 what that's going to do to him, she knows how much it is already hurting her. You know, there's all these components.

01:19:08
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

01:21:34
Speaker 3: 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.

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

01:21:52
Speaker 2: 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.

01:22:02
Speaker 1: 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.

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

01:22:22
Speaker 2: 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, which is a problem.

01:22:46
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 movie was written, I think, very intentionally, but I think it is important to consider the dynamics even.

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

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

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

01:24:09
Speaker 3: 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.

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

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

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

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

01:24:41
Speaker 1: 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 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 just abusive.

01:25:29
Speaker 3: 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 and their ability to withhold consent and say no.

01:25:58
Speaker 1: Right.

01:25:58
Speaker 3: 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 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.

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

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

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

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

01:27:05
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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 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 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 two teen girls how they have sex, I would be like, blitz, get me out.

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

01:29:26
Speaker 1: 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 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.

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

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

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

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

01:30:14
Speaker 2: 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.

01:30:34
Speaker 3: 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, 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.

01:31:09
Speaker 1: 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, 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 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 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.

01:32:27
Speaker 3: Sure.

01:32:27
Speaker 2: 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 about bands than growing up.

01:32:51
Speaker 1: 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 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 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.

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

01:33:44
Speaker 2: 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.

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

01:34:08
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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.

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

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

01:35:39
Speaker 1: 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.

01:35:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:35:50
Speaker 1: 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.

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

01:36:08
Speaker 1: 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.

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

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

01:36:29
Speaker 3: 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 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 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 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 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. 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.

01:38:36
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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.

01:40:01
Speaker 2: 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.

01:40:15
Speaker 1: 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. 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.

01:40:55
Speaker 2: 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.

01:41:06
Speaker 3: 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 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 are happening and being foreshadowed, and you don't realize all of it until the very end. And it's great writing.

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

01:42:01
Speaker 3: 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.

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

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

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

01:42:19
Speaker 3: 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 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.

01:42:55
Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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 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.

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

01:44:45
Speaker 1: 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.

01:45:02
Speaker 3: 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?

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

01:45:27
Speaker 3: Yeah?

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

01:45:30
Speaker 3: Like?

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

01:45:32
Speaker 3: 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.

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

01:45:46
Speaker 3: 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 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 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, 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 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.

01:47:30
Speaker 2: 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 far as I know.

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

01:49:49
Speaker 2: 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.

01:50:02
Speaker 3: 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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.

01:53:05
Speaker 1: 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:57:05
Speaker 2: Yeah.

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

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

01:57:11
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:57:12
Speaker 2: 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, the camp We leave the pigs alone.

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

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

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

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

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

01:57:44
Speaker 2: 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 their friendship and the hypocrisy and the shallowness. Is that a word shallowness?

01:58:16
Speaker 3: Yeah?

01:58:16
Speaker 2: 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.

01:58:31
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:58:32
Speaker 2: 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.

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

01:58:46
Speaker 1: 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.

01:59:04
Speaker 2: 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 you both so much. You guys are great.

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

01:59:31
Speaker 3: 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 Adriana's classes and services and she's incredible, so take them anyway. Adriana, what would you like to plug?

02:00:04
Speaker 2: 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.

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

02:00:24
Speaker 2: 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.

02:00:41
Speaker 3: 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.

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

02:00:56
Speaker 3: 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 be nominated for awards, you know, and.

02:01:23
Speaker 1: 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 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.

02:02:04
Speaker 3: Bye, Adios