i must have seen a different film!!

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Solo Con Tu Pareja, one of the most original films ever made in Mexican cinema (along with Cronos). This might not be the best Mexican movie but al least is my favorite one, It's such a fun movie to watch. Lubenski's photography (as always) is great, the art direction is interesting and the actings are good. I admit this is not a perfect movie the climax is kind of dumb, but what can i say, there is something about this film that i just love. Maybe is the old stereotype that we mexicans do about ourselves.Solo con tu pareja is a pornographic comedy that involves drunk Asian people, microwave suicide dogs, homemade jalapeños' slogan, little paper cones, suicide, and sex. Those little details are what i love about this movie, like Tomas running for the newspaper completely naked every morning.

A slow, unsettlingly voyeuristic opening shot isn't the only thing that this film shares with it's younger brother Y Tu Mama Tambien. Both films use sexuality to explore the psyche of the protagonists, and tread the line between sex comedy and revelatory drama.Do not walk into this film anticipating some sort of deep thinking, however. Tenoch and Julio were completely broken down individuals, we saw what made them tick, etc...That multi-layering isn't existent within Tomas. He's a womanizer intent on attaining the most beautiful woman he's seen, nothing more. It's a much more straight forward goal and development, seemingly lacking the dimensions that Cuaron's future characters are comprised of.Tomas Tomas is an enthusiastic playboy adamant about not using condoms. When a scorned fling is put in a situation perfect for payback, she falsely marks his AIDS test positive, setting him off on a darkly comic quest to kill himself, but not before the love of his life finds out her husband is cheating on her and decides to end her own life as well. Tomas takes this opportunity to take her with him into death, as the one woman in his life, as far as we know, that he has a shred of respect for. This is revealed as he makes a list of the women he's slept with, laughing as he remembers their nick names, not necessarily even their real ones.Visually, this film marks a point before Cuaron adopted his now staple handicam cinematography. The shots are graceful and smooth, the editing the same. It was gorgeous, with more than one shot inserted solely for the composition (off the top of my head, the vial of Tomas' blood filling up in front of a black background, though the room was white) At more than one time I felt like pausing the film just to take in the images.While it marks a step toward what he will become, Solo Con Tu Pareja is a much more accessible and enjoyable film than the challenging ones that Cuaron eventually becomes known for. As a ribald comedy it succeeds, and it may be due to it's not trying to be. I'm not saying it's trying to be popcorn, but it also doesn't strive to change lives.

Solo con tu pareja has been unavailable in the United States for over a decade, as the Mexican censors had some problems with the final product (hence not the usual distribution of festival screenings and whatnot). It's an admirable debut feature by a director who's obviously got plenty of passion in him, and a little invention to spare. While one might be a little off-set that there's a complete lack of the hand-held that's been synonymous with his later work (chiefly Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien, probably just as subversive as this), it's certainly original and with that spirit that one might recognize in some "light" French sex farce. Hell, we even get the guy going back and forth between two bedrooms in the nde trying to please two ladies at once!The guy is Tomas Tomas (Daniel Caucho, not quite the smoothest looking guy, but then that's part of his anti-appeal), who sleeps with many, many women, scorns a nurse who comes back to haunt him terribly, and is in love with one only- a stewardess (beautiful Claudia Ramirez)- who's getting married to a pilot. Throughout the movie we see him go into such a wacky bit like the one just mentioned, where he's pleasing a nurse he seduced during a blood test and his boss. And then drinking up and, depressed, saying he'll commit "harakiri" around some Japanese businessmen. Then when he gets devastating news (i.e. AIDS, just when it was at its hottest in controversy), he plans to follow in the absurd death of a poodle, who was stuffed into a microwave and toasted to a crisp. But what about Clarisa? Cuaron, with his long-time DP Emmanuel Lubezki, create many sumptuous visuals, lit with a bit of care that elevates it from being on the level of a dastard soap (which, frankly, it could be in the wrong hands), and he himself is an editor, which explains a few things like the crazy rhythm when showcasing the jalapeño commercial or Tomas's crazy sex dream up in the plane. There's so much energy and such a will from the actors to go wherever Cuaron wants (basically they're all game is what I mean) that you almost forget that the tone and structure is messy. Take the climax as prime example, where we get tender, hard existentialism as Tomas and Claudia are at the top of the roof of the building, inter-cut with the action on the ground- Tomas's burly doctor and a whole carnival car of Japanese businessmen and who knows who- racing to tell him he doesn't have AIDS. This, as with many other scenes, doesn't click as well (the NY Times review read my mind; it is, basically, a lightweight's Almodovar in mixing brazen, nutty comedy and the pulpiest of melodrama). Still, fans of farce will enjoy its pleasures, and its clever attitude; it doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is, which adds to the fun (if not outright belly laughs) seeing Tomas do a sort of dance as he goes naked each morning to get his paper, with wackiness ensuing. It certainly shows the director's chops, and it's a shame this didn't get more attention on its original release. 7.5/10

Hilarious Mexican version of 70's and 80's sex comedies but with a contemporary theme. Some may find this film veers a little too close to bad taste but it is done with such enthusiasm only a really repressed individual would complain. Shot in cinemascope, the film takes advantage of this to show a cosmopolitan and modern Mexico City that is rarely shown in film. A film that never lets up with the humor until the end credits.