Amor em Tempo de Histeria

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.

"Solo con tu pareja" or "Love in the Time of Hysteria" is an at-times outrageously funny black sex comedy from director Alfonso Cuarón. Its themes include the possibility of finding true love and the impact of AIDS on people's sex lives and psyches. This was especially timely in 1991 when AIDS was only beginning to fully enter public consciousness, but of course, it remains an important issue. The story itself, although I won't go into details, is clever and fulfilling. The performance of the cast is very good, especially Daniel Cacho, who is very believable as the perennial casanova Tomás Tomás, and Claudia Ramírez, who plays the pert, sultry flight attendant, Clarisa. Reminding me of Nabokov's Humbert Humbert, Cuarón plays with double names of many characters, including the cut-up doctor Mateos Mateos and his wife Teresa de Teresa. The editing is done in such a way that the film felt lived-in, familiar, as if life was going on inside it. For instance, the first time we meet the doctor and his wife, Tomás calls them and we see them out of the window, showing that they live in an adjacent apartment and are good friends. The cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki is beautiful, with very fine tracking shots, like the opening scene or in the woods at the wedding.

Solo Con Tu Pareja is a buried treasure. It's a bombastic screwball comedy by Alfonso Cuaron, who has since masterfully crafted Y Tu Mama Tambien and Children of Men with stunning individuality and creativity, both of which are within the consistent, crisply paced spirit of slapstick and farce that flourishes throughout this enormously entertaining movie about Tomás Tomás, a yuppie playboy, and a young publicist. Silvia Silva, the frustrated dupe of one of his sexual misadventures, tries to get back at him by typing "positive" on his AIDS test. Tomás, wanting to end his life, meets Clarissa, a flight attendant, who is also trying to end her own after finding out that her boyfriend is having an affair.

It seems tasteless to make humor out of AIDS, but if it's funny, what's the problem? There isn't one then, is there? And one can't dispute that it's admirable for a film, not to mention a comedy, to break the myth that AIDS is a seclusively homosexual disease, a myth built by masculine ego, which this film parodies by its womanizing protagonist, played by an admittedly less than charming actor though it is a role that would not be far from ideal for Cary Grant.

Really, what makes the film so funny is how insensitive everyone is. So many characters laugh at someone's tragic misfortune, are cavalier with life-or-death situations, are indifferent towards farcical situations which tie themselves in knots and Clarissa, the flight attendant, winds up quite accidentally with Tomas's stool rather than the lunch she has packed. Cuaron, along with his brother Carlos with whom he collaborated on the zany screenplay, loosens us up with affronting insensitivity splashed all over his broad comedy.

Aside from some explosively hilarious moments, a lot of one's enjoyment derives from the time and place in which this obscure gem was made. It has the feel of a high-production- value 1990s movie and conceives an expressionistic treatment of Mexico City as a personality, as a character in this film. Everything in this movie is alive, so how can one be offended by the film's seeming tactlessness? The filmmakers clearly have enormous strength of mind. They merely show us that life is life and fate is fate.

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.

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