"Solo con tu pareja" is a screwball comedy about AIDS. The strange thing is, it actually works. Translated from Spanish, the title means "only with your partner," and was the slogan used by Mexican public service announcements about the disease in the late 1980s. Maybe the key to the film's success is that no one actually gets AIDS in the movie. The disease is used as a vague threat instead, a potential consequence of the main character's promiscuous lifestyle that serves as a catalyst for change.
The film, released in 1991, is about a Mexican advertising executive named Tomas Tomas. He is basically who I wanted to be when I was 13-years-old. Everything comes easy to him. As I said, he's an advertising executive, but he doesn't work at his job so much as he bumbles through it somehow with the aplomb of James Bond. He also has a very good reason to worry about AIDS, since he seems to have unprotected sex with a different woman nearly every other day. The scenario borders on complete ridiculousness. Tomas is the type of man who, when goes to a wedding, has sex with the bride at the reception. I'm not saying this an appraisal of Tomas' character. I know this because it actually happens in the movie. Tomas essentially believes himself to be invincible and oozes confidence out of every pore. A certain daily ritual of his is very telling: In the morning, Tomas routinely drops his robe and runs down the stairs to the bottom floor of his apartment building, stark naked, to get the newspaper. I wonder if the movie has inspired any copycats.
If Greek tragedy tells us anything, it's that Tomas and his excessive pride are on the fast track for a fall from grace. This comes in the form of a nurse who gives him an AIDS test. Though the premise has been appropriated in some form or another by seemingly every sitcom known to mankind, Tomas at one point finds himself having to juggle two dates in two separate apartments at the same - one date with his boss, and the other with the nurse. Forget how this occurs, it's too complicated to explain, but rest assured that it leads to great comedy straight from the 1930s and 1940s screwball classics. Those films, such as "Bringing Up Baby," where Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn fall into possession of a leopard, are based upon misunderstanding and extricating one's self from a ridiculous situation. The only difference here I guess is the explicit sex. Back to "Solo con" - the nurse soon finds out about this double-dealing and decides to her exact revenge, in the form of falsely marking him HIV positive on the results Tomas will receive for his AIDS test. Though the punishment may fit the crime, it's a little harsh, don't you think? It seems that as much as "Solo con" advocates safe sex, it also teaches us another very important lesson: don't sleep with anyone who is handles your important paperwork.
Of course this plot leads to even more ridiculous situations, but it also hits some real human emotion along the way. The film certainly doesn't back out of bringing in the emotional baggage of believing you have AIDS, but that's not to say that the film suddenly turns into an unwieldy weep-fest. I'm just saying I'm glad the film lets the characters feel sincere emotion as any real human would, a trait that is often overlooked in comedies attempting to reach an emotional climax. It's a testament to the filmmakers' skill that the drama is always adeptly tempered and interwoven with comedy. For example, Tomas soon begins to contemplate suicide, but the instrument he chooses to administer his demise is . . . a microwave?
There's also a solid romantic thread through the film where Tomas actually falls in love, for real, for serious this time, with Clarisa, a beautiful flight attendant who lives next door. The only problem is that she has boyfriend. Oh, and Tomas thinks he has AIDS. I mentioned before that he decides to commit suicide, but after a spat with her boyfriend, Clarisa decides to do so as well. They talk, and eventually decide to throw themselves off of the tallest building in Mexico City, the only acceptable solution, it seems. In the climax of the film, Tomas' and Clarisa's friends race to stop them as the two slowly realize that they may actually have something to live for - I'll stop here, since you can probably figure the rest out. Just remember that, though the film may read a certain way on paper, these events and seemingly dark subjects aren't depressing or dark at all in the way they play out onscreen. It's a screwball comedy after all, and that feeling pervades the film. I doubt anyone watching the movie will believe for a second that the two would actually succeed in flinging themselves off of a skyscraper.
"Solo con" is the now internationally renowned director Alfonso Cuaron's first feature film. It was a box-office smash in Mexico, which gave Cuaron an opportunity to work in the States. The films he's made here, including "The Little Princess" and "Great Expectations," weren't very successful, so Cuaron returned to Mexico. It was with his second Spanish language film "Y tu mama tambien," that Cuaron earned the reputation he holds today. His most recent films are "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and the stellar "Children of Men." In "Solo con," you can already see the stylistic touches that Cuaron brings to his films, specifically a predilection for long, unbroken takes. His frequent collaborator, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, probably shares the responsibility for the staggering camera choreography in their films, most notably in "Children of Men," with its exceedingly complicated action sequences that seem to last for 4 or 5 minutes at a time as a single shot. In "Solo con tu pareja," you not only get a great comedy, but you can see the inception of some of filmmaking's most illustrious contemporary talents.
Join us for a free screening of "Solo con tu pareja" on Thursday, March 6, at 7:00 p.m. in the Mub Theatre I. For those of you who've attended screenings this semester, you were probably annoyed by an unnatural blue tint to the films that was caused by the faulty projector. I've been notified that the problem is being fixed, however, and by the time this article is published the projector should have already been replaced. Just so you know, the picture quality should be back to normal by now for all of our future screenings.
Be well, FU
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