Acclaimed for Children of Men, filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron has made the news with his new $100 Million deal at Universal, in conjunction with fellow Mexicans Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel) and Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth. Cuaron was a little discussed director until Y Tu Mama Tambien seemed to burst out of nowhere in 2001. One person who was paying attention to Cuaron’s earlier films was the then struggling writer in England who had seen Cuaron’s version of A Little Princess. Their path’s would cross almost nine years later when Cuaron directed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Until very recently though, unless you had seen the film at the Toronto Film Festival in 1991, or in Mexico, Cuaron’s first feature film was unavailable until just a few months ago. Thanks to Criterion, film fans can now see Solo Con Tu Pareja as well as one of Cuaron’s early short films on DVD.
The title translates as “Single with your pair”. Inspired by Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Cuaron’s film is about an advertising executive whose active libido gets the best of him. Tomas Tomas is the kind of guy who has no problem sneaking out with a newly married bride during the wedding party. One of his conquests, a nurse, discovers that Tomas was with another woman on the same night he was with her. As an act of revenge, she falsifies Tomas’ AIDs test, stating that he is positive. In the meantime, Tomas decides that the stewardess next door who has spied on by chance, is the love of his life.
Co-written with brother Carlos Cuaron, the film is a satire that touches on the cliches of Mexican identity, turning the idea of machismo upside down. In one of the DVD supplements, Alfonso Cuaron discusses being inspired by the comedies of Ernst Lubitsch and Blake Edwards. Curiously, the one filmmaker not mentioned is Billy Wilder, the director who bridges Lubitsch and Edwards. Some of the pratfalls and sight gags, such as Tomas being caught outside of his apartment naked, may remind viewers of Edwards’ films with Peter Sellers. But much of Solo Con Tu Pareja resembles a reworking of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment particularly with the scenes of attempted suicide on New Year’s Eve. The parallel to Wilder could not be clearer, where Wilder had his characters sticking their heads into an oven, Cuaron uses a microwave. As in some of Wilder’s films, the funniest bits in Solo Con Tu Pareja are too tasteless to describe.
The DVD includes Alfonso Cuaron’s 1983 short film, Quartet for the End of Time, and a short film made in 2000, Wedding Night, written and directed by Carlos Cuaron. Brief and funny, Carlos Cuaron’s short film bodes well for his own future as a director.
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