Summary
The group leaves the village the next day as the narrator tells us, "Martina [the old woman] gave Luisa the bear with her name on it. It had belonged to her granddaughter...who had died of a heat stroke 15 years ago, while crossing the border into Arizona with her parents, seeking a better life." The car passes large groups of people walking on the side of the road as the narrator continues: "Luisa thought that even after people die, they are still present. She wondered how long she would continue to live in the memory of others, but she preferred not to think about death."
As Tenoch drives, Luisa looks back at Julio, who has an erection just as Tenoch did earlier. Julio is self-conscious and covers it up as Luisa climbs in the back and asks to see his penis. Tenoch becomes upset, but Luisa insists, "You came into my room, Tenoch, but it might have been Julio just as well."
As Luisa takes Tenoch's hat, Tenoch swerves the car off the road and gets out, walking away in a huff. Julio wants to talk to his friend, but Luisa tells him to stay and the two of them begin taking off their clothes and clumsily having sex. Like Tenoch, Julio also ejaculates prematurely. When they are finished, Luisa goes over to find Tenoch, and comforts him. "Isn't this what you wanted from the start?...to take me away and screw me?" she asks him. When Tenoch is not comforted, Luisa apologizes and the group hits the road again.
Julio drives, and Tenoch tells him from the backseat that he also cheated and slept with Julio's girlfriend, Ceci, after a concert. Julio is upset and asks him where it happened. Tenoch tells him that they had sex at his house, and that she was wearing floral panties. Luisa is surprised to hear that they have both betrayed each other, invoking their Manifesto, as Julio pulls over and challenges Tenoch to a fight.
When Luisa tries to get in the middle of the fight, Julio pushes her and she becomes enraged, yelling, "I thought you'd be different, but you're just animals!" Growing more and more angry, she yells, "Typical men! Fighting like dogs and marking their territory. What you really want is to fuck each other!"
The boys stare at her as she storms off with her bag, yelling, "Play with babies and you'll end up washing diapers!" Julio orders Tenoch to get on his knees and beg for forgiveness, which Tenoch does reluctantly. They get in the car and drive to catch up to Luisa, Julio yelling that Tenoch has ruined their friendship.
Tenoch calls to Luisa, telling her to get in, but she ignores them, telling them she's getting a bus. "We promise we won't fight!" they yell and tell her they will do whatever she wants. "If I come, we do things my way," she tells them, laying her bag on the hood of the car and telling them she's leaving if they fight again.
In the car, Luisa makes her own Manifesto: "One, I won't fuck either of you. You can fuck each other, if you like. Two, I'm going to sunbathe naked and I don't want you sniffing around like dogs. Three, I pick the music. Four, please shut your mouths whenever I ask you to. Five, you cook. Six, no stories about your poor girlfriends. Seven, if I ask, stay 10 yards from me...Eight, obviously, you do all the manual labor. Nine, you may not speak of things you don't agree on...And ten, you're not allowed to contradict me."
At sunset, Tenoch looks at a map, trying to piece together Saba's directions to no avail. Afraid that Luisa will catch on to the fact that they lied, Julio takes a right onto a dirt road and their tires get stuck in some deep sand. Julio lights a cigarette and the narrator tells us that even though Tenoch and Julio thought Luisa was asleep, "her fear kept her awake." They sleep in the car.
The next morning, Luisa awakens and gets out of the car to look around. Stretching, she walks a bit and finds a large sandy beach. She takes off her shoes and wades into the water. When they wake up, Tenoch swims in the ocean and Julio sets up camp while Luisa sunbathes naked. Later, Julio sees a boat with a man yelling about fried fish onboard. The boat comes ashore, carrying a man named Jesus Carranza ("Chuy") and his wife Mabel, fourth generation fishermen, who cook for Luisa, Julio, and Tenoch. Chuy offers them a tour of the area for 350 pesos, meals included.
The next day, they go on the tour, and Tenoch asks to drive the boat as Chuy points out a beautiful swimming beach up ahead called "Heaven's Mouth." Alarmed that such a beach actually exists, Julio looks back at Tenoch, who smiles at his friend, surprised. They land on the beach and Julio and Tenoch swim together, while Luisa plays with the young daughter of Chuy in the shallower water.
When Luisa sits with Mabel and her two children, Mabel tells her she should have children and Luisa smiles sadly as she holds the young boy. Julio and Tenoch play soccer as Chuy tends goal and pretends to be an announcer. Chuy saves the ball from the goal and yells triumphantly.
Analysis
Death comes up again and again in the narrative. What seems like a simple story of a road trip and sexual experimentation is in fact an existential meditation. Hardship and death serves as a backdrop to many of the trio's experiences, starting with the traffic that Tenoch and Julio hit as a result of the worker who is hit, all the way to the story of the bear that Luisa inherits on the road. While the central characters in the film come from privileged backgrounds, inequality is a shadow in the background of their exploits, and we are often reminded that poverty and lack of resources is a deadly reality in an unequal society.
In this section of the film, Luisa sets to work trying to right the inequality that exists in the relationship between the members of the trio. Having had sex with Tenoch, she wants to give Julio a little attention in order to make things more equal. As she tells Tenoch while climbing into the back seat to get a closer look at Julio's penis, "You came into my room, Tenoch, but it might have been Julio just as well." Luisa's age puts her in an elevated position within the group, and from this position, she seeks to show the two jealous boys that love and sex can be less dramatic, that it can go in different directions at different times.
Another twist occurs when Tenoch reveals to Julio that he also slept with his girlfriend, Ceci. The twist is surprising not only because it shows that both of the friends have betrayed one another, but because it reveals Tenoch's hypocrisy for having been so upset about Julio's betrayal. It shows that the ethical relationship between the friends has been chaotic and dishonest—yet not unequal or one-sided.
At the outbreak of Julio and Tenoch's fight, Luisa lets her own emotions fly, her disappointment at the young men and their behavior, and even invokes the seemingly unspeakable sexual tension between them. She bemoans the fact that she thought they would be different, but they are just like other men, "fighting like dogs and marking their territory." She suggests that perhaps the tension between them has to do with their own desire for one another, storming off down the road with her bag, disappointed most by the fact that they are not even good at sex, having both ejaculated prematurely in her respective encounters with them.
The road trip, so difficult and chaotic until now, turns into a kind of fairy tale in this leg of the journey. In spite of having no idea where they are going, the boys manage to accidentally navigate the trip to a beautiful beach. Not only that, but they make the acquaintance of a tour guide who takes them to a beach called "Heaven's Mouth." While Julio and Tenoch believe that they have made up a beach of that name, they manage to get themselves to a beach of that exact name, an almost magical twist of fate, as though they conjured it into existence themselves. After a period of discord and disharmony, the trip seems to fall fantastically into place.
