16 August - "I don't want to die like that French Poodle!"

Sólo Con Tu Pareja (1991)

dir. Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También, 2001)

CAST

Daniel Giménez Cacho (Cabeza de Vaca, 1991)

Claudia Ramírez

Ricardo Dalmacci

It amazes me how different the cultural standards for sexuality in cinema. In this movie, there's one scene where three children running through the woods stumble upon the protagonist making noisy love with a soon-be-bride, and one of them squirts them with a water pistol. It's hilarious, but Americans would never stand for it. In America, children aren't supposed to know that sex exists, only that males and females have a tendency to pair off and somehow or another offspring consequently occur.

Another thing that sets this movie apart is that it's about a man who realizes that he's pretty much a slut, and feels bad about it. The initial plot is that Tomas isn't happy with the person he has become. He keeps screwing around with these girls and saying alternatively that, "This isn't really me," and, "a leopard can't change it's spots."

The best part is when Tomas has to "entertain" two ladies at the same time, by climbing in and out of the windows of two apartments. However, on each trip he is riveted to the window in between the two apartments, where a third woman lives, the one he is actually in love with. This woman has a man, though, and she doesn't need to play the same tedious games that Tomas is engaged in. That's what makes her so attractive and untouchable.

So one of the ladies gets wind that she's been tricked, and since she's also Tomas's nurse, she falsifies his lab results and makes him think he's got AIDS. So he decides to do the suicide thing, except then the unattainable girl finds out her fiance is sleeping around, she decides to die, too, and so both of them are going to jump off a building together, but they fall in LOVE and Tomas figures out he's not infected after all. The end.