Rudo Y Cursi

In 2001, Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna starred in Alfonso Cuaron's Y Tu Mama Tambien in which they played two friends who were growing up with sexual needs and were both in love with the same woman. The film launched both to stardom and they both have had a fair share of mostly supporting roles in some very acclaimed films. This film, Rudo Y Cursi (translating into Rude and Corny, and directed by Alfonso's brother, Carlos Cuaron), features the reuniting of the two actors as brothers who are part of a simple family that farms bananas. Diego Luna plays Beto who is very rude and Gael Garcia Bernal plays Tato who is very corny thus making them two distinct personalities that only share two similarities, one being their family and the other being their love for soccer. They are both discovered by a scout and before you know it they are both being tempted by the fame of becoming international soccer stars from Mexico. Although the film has a pleasant homely vibe that mostly comes from the interaction between Beto and Tato, the stories behind all of the success and failures aren't as interesting. I'd much rather have the film just be about the the two brothers as the whole soccer plot feels slightly unnecessary. And yet those few soccer scenes are shot with such a stylistic eye that befits Cha Cha Cha Productions (the company was formed by Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo Del Toro, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu; three spanish filmmakers who shocked us all in 2006 with their films Children of Men, Pan's Labyrinth, and Babel respectively). Overall, a better title for this film would be the spanish translation of "charming yes, memorable no." And yet I felt attached enough to these characters to give the film another viewing some other day.