Water
Water is a recurring important image throughout the film. In Mexico City, Tenoch and Julio spend a lot of time at the country club, swimming laps on the days it is closed. At one point, they masturbate side by side on adjacent diving boards. As they have orgasms, we see their semen hitting the water, as if from underwater.
On the road trip, after Julio finds Tenoch sleeping with Luisa, he goes down to a pool covered in leaves, and when Tenoch follows him, the boys swim laps. We watch as they swim naked underneath the leaves at the surface of the pool, trying to reconcile the tension between them in the water.
Finally, the end goal of the trip is to reach the beach and explore the water along the coast. When they wake up at the beach, Luisa runs down to the water, getting the bottom of her pants wet in the waves.
Chuy's family in their boat
The shot of Chuy and his family on their boat cuts out the main characters momentarily and brings the focus of the movie onto the marginalized, the characters who are in more precarious economic circumstances. As we watch Chuy and his tight-knit family navigate their boat through the water, the narrator tells us that Chuy will have to give up his job as a fisherman when a luxury hotel crops up on the beach. The beauty of the boat and Chuy's idyllic life is juxtaposed with the bleakness of the future, and we see the family in ambiguous relief, at once contented in their simple existence, but unsure of what the future will hold for them.
Luisa's Body
Luisa is presented as an erotic fixation for the boys. She has a beautiful womanly body, and we see her nude in various sexual scenes with the teenagers. However, while we know the boys are objectifying her body, the camera does not do so. On their last night together, Luisa gets drunk and turns on the jukebox. As the song begins to play, she dances towards the camera, and it is one of the only instances in which the camera shoots a character straight on. We see Luisa's desire and her love of life in a more direct way, let in on her subjectivity with greater clarity. Suddenly, the film is not about the boys and their dynamic with Luisa, but about her relationship to herself and her body.
This imagery is echoed when we see Luisa walking along the beach the next day, and when we see her from close behind as she dives into the ocean.
The Road
Like many other road trip movies before it, the road in Y Tu Mamá También represents freedom—in particular, sexual and political freedom. The traffic jam caused by the protest and death of a construction worker in Mexico City highlights how Mexico's political problems are stifling freedom. Once Tenoch, Julio, and Luisa embark on their trip, the road becomes more open, stretching out in front of them, like an unwritten page.
