Summary
Julio, Tenoch, and Luisa sit on the beach looking at the water, passing a spliff between them. "Do you ever wish you could live forever?" Luisa asks them, adding, "Wouldn't it be great?"
We see Chuy and Mabel bringing the group back to where their car is that evening, as the narrator tells us that the fisherman and his wife will soon have to leave their home for the building of an "exclusive hotel." The narrator tells us that Chuy will try to give boat tours, but will end up getting pushed out of this venture by the tourism board and end up having to work as a janitor at the hotel, never fishing again.
As they approach the beach, they notice that a large group of pigs has taken over their camp and Julio and Tenoch run to shoo the pigs away. After the pigs have ruined the campsite, Julio and Tenoch decide that they ought to go stay in a room of Chuy's in San Bernabe for 75 pesos for the night. The narrator tells us, "The 23 pigs had escaped from a nearby ranch. Over the next two months, 14 would be slaughtered. 3 of them would provoke an outbreak of trichinosis among those who attended a festival at the Chavarin Ranch."
Julio and Tenoch play foosball in town while Luisa speaks to Jano on the phone, telling him she was going to leave him anyway, but his confession made it easier. She tells him that she always knew about his affairs, but hoped he would change. She then assures him that her decision to leave did not have to do with his affair, however, and that he will understand soon enough. She tells him that no one is to blame for her leaving, that she loves him and that he was her "whole life." Holding back tears, Luisa tells Jano that she barely took any money, and that she hopes he will learn to be happy. She sobs as she hangs up the phone.
That night at dinner, Luisa is in better spirits and tells Julio and Tenoch that she knew Jano was having affairs because he would try things on her that he had learned from his mistresses. She tells them she loved meeting them and that they are lucky to live in a country like Mexico because "it oozes life." Luisa then asks the boys if they have repaired their friendship and they laughingly confront each other about the insults they hurled in the fight. When Tenoch calls Julio a social climber, Julio laughs and suggests that he only comes over to Tenoch's house to see what his father has robbed from society. Hearing Julio's accusation, Luisa defends Tenoch's father, but Tenoch is in agreement with Julio, laughing. She laughs with them and raises a toast to the Charolastras, deeming their conflict healed. They all toast.
When Tenoch goes to get the group beer, Julio apologizes to Luisa for pushing her. She accepts his apology and they kiss on the cheek. Returning with the beers, Tenoch asks Luisa which of the two friends is better in bed, and Luisa laughs and tells Julio that Tenoch says "Mamacita!" when he comes. She then tells them that Julio crosses his eyes when he comes as the boys wrestle and laugh hysterically. Luisa advises them to stop masturbating so much so they can have more stamina in bed and complains to the waiter that neither Tenoch nor Julio know how to perform oral sex on a woman. "You have to make the clitoris your best friend," she says, to which Tenoch counters, "What kind of friend is always hiding?"
"The greatest pleasure is giving pleasure," Luisa tells them, as Julio yells "Hail the clit!" to the rest of the restaurant. They toast to the clitoris. The boys then discuss the fact that they both received oral sex from one another's girlfriends, but now have a congenial attitude about it, toasting to blowjobs next. Both of the boys admit to having sex with one another's girlfriend more than once, and they laugh about it. Luisa raises a toast to Ana and Ceci, and the fact that they are probably "screwing 10 Italians as we speak." When Julio tells Tenoch that he slept with Tenoch's mother, it is unclear if he is joking or not, but they laugh and toast nonetheless.
Luisa asks the boys for a random number and letter, and plugs it into the jukebox. As a song begins to play, Luisa dances towards Tenoch and Julio seductively. She takes their hands and leads them to the middle of the room, where they all dance to the song.
Back in their room, Tenoch kisses Luisa and takes off her dress, and Julio begins to kiss her as well. As Luisa lowers herself to perform oral sex on them both, Julio and Tenoch kiss each other passionately.
The next morning, Luisa eats breakfast with Mabel and her children. Julio and Tenoch wake up beside one another in bed, naked, and hastily dress. Tenoch runs out of the run and vomits on the sand, hungover. When Julio comes out, he tells Luisa that he needs to get the car back to his sister. Tenoch emerges and tells Luisa that he has to get home. She tells the boys that she's going to stay on with Mabel for a few more days and see the beaches.
Later, the boys clean up their camp, while Luisa walks on the beach. The narrator says, "At 1:00 PM, Julio and Tenoch began their journey back home. It was a very quiet, uneventful trip. Their families never knew about the trip to the beach with Luisa. She stayed in San Bernabe to begin her exploration of the local bays. The last thing she told Tenoch and Julio was, 'Life is like foam, so give yourself away like the sea.'" We see Luisa dive into the ocean.
Back in Mexico City, Ana and Cecilia break up with Tenoch and Julio after returning from their trip. The narrator tells us that after two months, Tenoch began dating his neighbor and after nine months, Julio began dating a girl from his French class, adding, "Julio and Tenoch stopped seeing each other."
The narrator continues, "The following summer, the ruling party lost the presidential election for the first time in 71 years. Julio ran into Tenoch on the way to the dentist. Going for a cup of coffee was easier than making excuses to avoid it." The friends sit down to coffee and Tenoch asks Julio if he has seen Saba. He then asks about their gay friend, Daniel, whose father recently kicked him out of the house. Tenoch wants to feel sorry for him, but Julio insists, "The fucker's happy. Got a boyfriend and everything." Tenoch tells Julio that he is going to college to study economics, and Julio says he is going to study biology.
Tenoch tells Julio that Luisa died recently. She had cancer all along and died in San Bernabe while staying with Chuy, and had known all during their trip. "She didn't want anyone to know," Tenoch says. The narrator tells us that Luisa requested that Chuy and Mabel never mention her trip with Julio and Tenoch, and that she gave her stuffed bear to their child when she died. Julio and Tenoch say goodbye to one another, Julio insistent on paying the check. The narrator tells us that the two friends never saw each other again.
Analysis
The narrator, as an omniscient authority on the events of the film, not only knows what the characters are thinking and the secrets they are keeping to themselves, but also can tell the future. His all-knowing position lets the viewer in on some tragic realities in the narrative. For instance, when the group is on their way back to the camp, the narrator tells us that Chuy and his family will later be relocated by development initiatives, and Chuy will be forced to become a janitor at a luxury hotel, never able to fish again. Thus, we watch the events of the film with a retrospective melancholy, knowing that the kind fisherman will have to change his life for the worse soon enough.
Luisa's circumstances become more mysterious when she talks to Jano on the phone in San Bernabe. She tells him that she always knew about his affairs, and that she hoped he would change, but then adds that she was planning to leave him anyway and his affairs have made that easier. She will not say why she was planning to leave, only that it will make sense soon enough. Like Jano, the viewer is also in the dark, left to wonder what Luisa is talking about.
At its core, the tension in Julio and Tenoch's friendship has to do with their class differences, or at least their perceptions of these differences. In their most heated moment, Tenoch called Julio a hillbilly and Julio called Tenoch a yuppie, and in their conversation of reconciliation, they each ask one another about these derogatory designations questioning whether they deserve them. Resolution only comes when Julio alludes to the fact that Tenoch's father is corrupt, an assessment with which Tenoch heartily agrees, laughing. While the boys come from very different class backgrounds, they find agreement in their critique of Tenoch's patriarchal father and his dishonest politics.
The film is notably shot with a handheld camera throughout, which gives an air of realism to the proceedings. The shakiness of the camera makes it seem almost like a documentary or a piece of found footage, and shots are not set up in highly constructed ways the way they might be in another film. Often, Cuarón shoots the action from the periphery, as if the camera is eavesdropping on the action. In this final section, it takes an uncharacteristically direct position, immediately after Luisa plugs a song into the jukebox. As the song plays, Luisa dances towards the camera, swigging her tequila and swaying her hips. This perspective, one of the few moments in which a character is directly facing the camera, puts us in an intimate relationship to Luisa. The viewer is at once aligned with her plight, let in on her feeling of recklessness and abandon, and also enthralled by her beauty straight-on. The camera angle allows us to empathize with her at the same time as she is seducing us.
At the center of the film is an existential lesson, initiated by Luisa, but one which cannot be integrated into Tenoch and Julio's lives. As the narrator tells us, her last words to the boys are, "Life is like foam, so give yourself away like the sea," a meditation on her own finite mortality due to illness. In her embrace of life, Luisa has tried to teach the young men to embrace their own, to follow their own impulses, and to follow their hearts. Part of this is about accounting for their own love for one another and their ability to merge their differences—differences in class and temperament—as symbolized through their erotic connection on the last night of the trip. However, upon returning to the city and society, the young men are unable to maintain this connection and are forced apart by the hegemonies and tensions of their political circumstances.
