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 Entertainment | October 2006 
Cuaron Boosts Mexican Cinema
 Marc Mohan - OregonLive.com
| | Alfonso Cuaron |
With the kind of range that has allowed him to move from Harry Potter to hot-art house sex, Alfonso Cuaron has earned the right to be considered a director to watch, and he is one of the primary reasons Mexican cinema has a higher profile today than it has in decades. It only makes sense, then, that the Criterion Collection, arbiters of important cinema in the DVD world, has chosen to release Cuaron's 1991 debut feature, "Solo Con Tu Pareja."
It's a sex farce in the Blake Edwards mold, set in middle-class Mexico City and centering on an amoral lothario named Tomas Tomas (Daniel Gimenez Cacho). While engaging in standard slapstick shenanigans like creeping along a window ledge between two apartments (each holding a different woman he's seducing), only to lose the towel in which he's clad, Tomas is a likable, macho rogue. When a nurse he's spurned exacts her revenge by making him think he's HIV-positive, and a pretty stewardess moves in next door, the immature lout is on the road to redemption and delayed adulthood.
It's not a great film, but it does have its moments, including a bravely comic take on the AIDS crisis (the title translates as "only with your partner" and is taken from a Mexican anti-AIDS public service ad). Its initial release in Mexico was a success, but the film was never picked up for American audiences until now. The skill with actors and visual acumen Cuaron displayed, though, along with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, was enough to warrant an invitation to Hollywood to direct, of all things, a G-rated kids movie. This pattern would repeat itself when his later hit, the unrated "Y Tu Mama Tambien," led directly to helming the third Harry Potter film.
Cuaron's impressive resume continues with his latest, the dark sci-fi tale "Children of Men," due here around the new year but already drawing acclaim.
Along with Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth") and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ("Babel"), it could be a banner year for Mexican filmmakers. All three are between 42 and 44 years old and have managed to perform the delicate task of carving out careers both in America and Mexico, preserving their individual styles while obtaining the resources they need to bring their visions to life. |
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