Ourweekly columnStaff Pickstakes you back to a time when video stores reigned supreme andthe "Staff Picks" section was the placetofind outwhat films were worthy of one's time.Of course, our version ofStaff Pickshas a decidedly skintillating angle, as we suss out which films from a particular subgenre are the best to find great nudity. This week, Mexican cinema transitions into a new century and a new golden age of film production with the movement known as Nuevo Cine Mexicano!
Mexican cinema's first golden age was between the 1930s and 1960s, as filmmakersborrowed many techniques of Hollywood studio filmmaking to give their fellow countrymen a voice. As film production moved into the 1970s, exploitation pictures began to rule the day, and though the Mexican government began authorizing funding for filmmakers, many of these films were dwarfed by the influx of Hollywood blockbusters in the 70s and 80s. While many technological advances in film were made during this period, the films produced in Mexico tended to cater to, as Guillermo Del Toro put it, "lowest common denominator" movies. Then, as a new generation of filmmakers began their careers in the 1990s, the game changed once again.
In that same profile quoted above onseveral Mexican filmmakers in theAustin American Statesman in 2002, Del Toro put a pretty fine point on what his generation did to rescue Mexican cinema saying,"In the 80’s there was a huge void in Mexican cinema, then my generation picked up the staff in the early 90s." What Del Toro and his contemporaries did wasn't so much reinventing the wheel as it was returning to the roots of Mexican cinema, tackling the topics and issues that appealed to the broadest section of the population, and bringing a uniquely Mexican voice to the rest of the world.
The exact start date of the Nuevo Cine Mexicano movement is disputed by many, with some placing Alfonso Arau's 1992 filmLike Water for Chocolate as the official starting point, while others argue it came much later in the 1990s. It's generally accepted, however, that the movement was in fullswing by the turn of the century, as audiences worldwide were finally being exposed to new and vital Mexican voices that would come to dominate world cinema over the ensuing decades.
Very quickly, Guillermo Del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, and Alejandro González Iñarritu became the faces of the movement, dubbed The Three Amigos, and all three would go on to enormous success. Any Mexican film by the three of them made at any point in their careers could be considered essential examples of the subgenre, though Del Toro's films rarely feature nudity. Other films with no nudity or less nudity than those we're discussing today which would also be considered essential viewing include Juan Carlos de Llaca's Dust to Dust,Antonio Serrano’s Sexo, pudor y lágrimas, Michael Rowe'sAño Bisiesto,Amat Escalante's Heli, and Alonso Ruizpalacios’s Güeros.
Amores perros (2000)
Before he won back-to-back Best Director Oscars,Alejandro González Iñarritu made his feature directorial debut with this 2000 film that also fits nicely into the Hyperlink Cinemasubgenre. The film features three storylines with the characters all connected by a car crash, but we're going to focus on just one of those storylines, as it's the one with nudity. Gael Garcia Bernal, the poster boy for Nuevo Cine Mexicano, plays a man named Octavio who is obsessed with his brother's wife Susana (Vanessa Bauche).
Upset with the way his brother treats Susana, including beating her on several occasions, Octavio offers her the chance to run away with him. After discovering that his dog is a vicious killer who can hold its own in a dogfight, he soon throws himself into that equally shady and awful world, hoping his rottweiler can provide him with the funds he needs to abscond with his brother's wife. Of course, nothing goes according to the plan and, in fact, spins hopelessly out of control.
Before things get too unbearable, however, we do get a nice sex scene between Bernal and Vanessa Bauche, with the Mexican beauty doffing her top for a nice look at her perky pair and niptastic nips...
**Available to rent, own, or stream for free for members viaAmazon Prime Video
Y Tu Mamá También (2001)
Following his debut Mexican featureSólo Con Tu Pareja, Cuarón came to Hollywood in the mid-90s to direct a pair of high profile literary adaptation—1995'sA Little Princessand 1998'sGreat Expectations. Though both films were well received and critically lauded, neither of them set the box office on fire, causing the director to do some soul searching. He returned to Mexico for his fourth film, stripping away all of the stylistic flourishes that marked his first venture to Hollywood, getting down and dirty—quite dirty, in fact—with 2001'sY Tu Mamá También.
Technically a period piece set two years before it was made, the film follows the lifelong friends Julio (Gael García Bernal, once again) and Tenoch (Diego Luna) set to spend the summer livingit up as their girlfriends are traveling to Spain. The horny pair spend their languorous first days of bachelorhood mostly wasting time and masturbating together by the pool.While attending a wedding, the pair run into Luisa (Maribel Verdú), the wife of Tenoch's cousin, asking her to accompany them on a trip to a hidden beach namedBoca del Cielo. At first she seems reluctant to go with them, but after her husband confesses drunkenly that he cheated on her, she throws caution to the wind and joins Julio and Tenoch on their voyage.
The boys have fabricated this mystical beach in a move of typical young adult braggadocio, but with a sexually experienced woman in tow, they remain bound and determined to make this a trip to remember.Stopping at a motel for the evening, Tenoch comes out of the shower to discover a despondent Luisahaving just informed her husband that she is leaving him. Tenoch then finds himself seduced by Luisa, removing his towel and giving him the best 88 seconds of his life until that point...
In a turn of fair play, Luisa offers herself to Julio the next morning in the car, and Julio treats her to an identical 88 seconds of bliss in one of the film's many brilliant flourishes...
While it was likely evident to Luisa prior to this, she and both young men have come to the stark realization that neither of them is as sexually experienced as they once thought. Though they talk a big game, as all young men do, they clearly don't have the skills to back up all of that talk. The film was a rousing success and helped Cuarón land a gig directing the third Harry Potter movie, which also put him on the path to quickly becoming a multiple-Oscar winning director.
**Available to stream for members via bothNetflix and The Criterion Channel
El Crimen del Padre Amaro (2002)
Our last film starring Gael Garcia Bernal is this Oscar-nominated drama that takes dead aim at two of Mexico's thorniest issues: The Catholic Church and the pro-life/pro-choice debate. Directed byCarlos Carrera, the film tells the tale of the titular priest, played by Bernal, who is assigned toassist the lead priest at a small parish in the rural community of Los Reyes. He quickly discovers that his superior priest is crooked as all get out, dealing drugs to line his own pockets and brazenly carrying on an affair with a local woman. Amaro is filled with righteous indignation over his superior's behavior, but soon finds himself attracted tothe daughter of the woman his boss is getting it on with, Amelia, played by Ana Claudia Talancón.
At first, Amelia is blind to Amaro's amorous intentions, confessing her sins to him and even admitting that she masturbates while thinking about Jesus. Asscandalous such an admission is, it's merely the set-up for the film's turn which finds Amelia dumping her fiancé and shacking up with the good priest. It isn't long, however, before Amelia becomes pregnant, a true scandal. Although Amaro encourages her to leave town, she instead attempts to say that her ex-fiancé is the father and sheattempts to reconcile with him. The truth, however, won't stay buried for long.
Before things get really bleak in the film, we're treated to two topless scenes from Ana Claudia Talancón, including this tender love-making session where Amaro romances her by quoting verses from Song of Songs while sexing her up...
At the time of the film's release, Catholic bishops condemned the film, asking the Mexican government to ban the film (they didn't) and encouraging Catholics not to see the film. Perhaps this alone was enough to convince the Academy to nominate the film for Best Foreign Language Feature, but the film itself is solid enough to stand on its own merits, apart from the controversy. However, you can feel how palpable this subject matter is even for the cast members, as it gives the film a decided air of naughtiness that helps elevate it above standard controversial fare.
**Available to rent or own via bothVUDU and Fandango NOW
Post Tenebras Lux (2012)
Truly one of the most unusual, psychedelic, and insane movies you'll ever see, directorCarlos Reygadas' 2012 film is one of the more divisive films on our list. It's almost impossible to explain the plot of Post Tenebras Lux as it's not really a film with a strong narrative through-line. Husband Juan (Adolfo Jimenez Castro) and his wife Natalia (Nathalia Acevedo) take their two young children and leave the city to move to an isolated rural mansion. Then things get weird, and not any kind of weird you've ever seen or experienced before, but the kind that makes one sit back and wonder, "Who comes up with this stuff?"
Our first taste of nudity comes fairly early on when Nathalia Acevedo wakes up nude and walks around the house baring all three Bs...
As the film wears on, it becomes clear that Juan's mental state is not all it's cracked up to be as he is plagued by visions of nude women, including his own wife, with Acevedo once more baring all in a series of bizarre hallucinations...
While I can't promise that you'll like Post Tenebras Lux, you will be hard-pressed to say it's like anything else you've ever seen. Like the work of both fellow countryman Luis Buñuel and French-Chilean surrealist film legend Alejandro Jodorowsky, the film exists outside the boundaries of any genre, feeling as if it could only have come from the mind of a man who is equal parts genius and madman.
**Available to rent or own via Amazon Prime Video
The Untamed (2016)
While Guillermo Del Toro is sort of the undisputed Mexican master of horror, he's not the only guy cranking out well-made, stylish horror flicks that are as scary as they are competently made. Writer/directorAmat Escalante presents a new vision of horror with 2016's The Untamed, a tale of two sexually frustrated and confused women whose paths collide in the most unexpected of ways. Mother of two Alejandra (Ruth Ramos) is in a loveless marriage with a man who is carrying on a homosexual affair with her own brother. Meanwhile Verónica (Simone Bucio) is a sexually inexperienced young woman who pays frequent visits to a tentacle monster kept in an elderly couple's barn after a meteor crash, allowing the creature to penetrate her with its tentacles...
Verónica is eventually bitten by the creature, which lands her in the hospital under the care of Alejandra's brother. Eventually the two cross paths and it isn't long before Alejandra wants to get to know the creature as well. An hour and 13 minutes in, we get a full-on monster/human tentacle porn sex scene for the ages between Ruth Ramos and a cgi-creature that manages to not be thoroughly off-putting...
Where Post Tenebras Lux is more elusive about its weirdness, The Untamed faces down strangeness head on in an "you ain't seen nothin' yet" kind of fashion.
**Available to rent or own via Amazon Prime Video
