Y tu mamá también

If "Y tu Mama Tambien" wasn't well-known when it came out back in the early 2000s, it certainly is now. The director, Alfonso Cuaron, has won critical plaudits and box office receipts with "Children of Men" and "Gravity." Stars Gael Garcia Bernal ("Bad Education," "No,") and Diego Luna ("Milk," "Elysium") have made names for themselves. And the movie itself - about two young boys who take a road trip with a sultry older woman, and engage in some cyclical sex patterns in the process - has surely gained in stature. How else to explain this stacked-with-extras Criterion re-release, a decade and change after the film's first release?

That re-release, by the way, looks absolutely gorgeous. Criterion has sourced this visual transfer from a 4K restoration of the film, and the detail bears that out. The film, somewhat famously, concludes at a beach, and the landscape shots on display then have a tactile, filmic visual texture; you could pick individual grains of sand out of these images.

The Blu-ray release comes up with much more than upgraded visuals, of course. First off, we get the requisite extras: TV spots, a trailer, and a few scattered minutes of deleted scenes. After that, we get three separate "making of" features: the first is a 20-something minute feature, from the film's release in 2001, that's mainly comprised of footage taken from the set. Then we get two more documentaries: "Then" is a ten-minute collection of interviews with the cast and crew from the year the film was made, while the 40-minute "Now" details, via interviews, how "Mama" affected the careers of Cuaron, Bernal, Luna, actress Maribel Verdu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki.

If you're more into subtext than context, though, then there's something here for you too: a particularly entertaining special feature sees philosopher-cum-rock-star Slavoj Zizek break the film down into allegory. As is usual, Zizek goes way off the rails, the beaten path, and whatever other tracks we're expected to stay on in his reading; ascribing very specific Mexican political meanings and symbolic significance to the characters and their actions.

We close things out with a few extras that come courtesy of the filmmaker's son, Carlos Cuaron. We get a short film he directed ("You Owe Me One,") and a collection of biographies on the characters of "Mama" as well. The film takes place during a closed period of time, and so the biographies reveal details on the characters that the text itself only hints at. It reminds us what made this Cuaron film so striking in the first place - for all the style and visual beauty on display, the main focus is on lived-in performances. Cuaron's eye, back then, was trained on people, and not on special effects.

"Y tu Mama Tambien"
Blu-ray/DVD Dual Format Release
Criterion.com
$39.95