Film

Y Tu Mamá También

Two rich Mexico City teenagers and the beautiful older woman who's just left her husband drive to a beach that may not exist, drinking, arguing, and sleeping their way through a summer none of them will fully recover from. Cuarón's camera keeps drifting off the trio to catch soldiers, funerals, roadside stalls — the country itself intruding on their bubble. Funny, horny, and quietly devastating by the end.

TMDb rating7.4

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The Motorcycle Diaries2004

Gael García Bernal again on a road trip across a continent, this time as young Che Guevara — same restless energy, same privilege cracking open mile by mile.

But Earnest where Cuarón's film is impish; the politics arrive capital-P and none of the mischief survives the border crossing.

The Motorcycle Diaries poster

Amores Perros2000

Same year, same wave of Mexican filmmakers rewriting their own cinema — three intersecting stories of love and violence in Mexico City, told with the same unsentimental eye.

But Bleaker and more brutal; there's no summer haze here, only consequence.

Amores Perros poster

Call Me by Your Name2017

Another sun-drenched summer where desire outruns anyone's ability to name it, and an ending that trades explicitness for pure ache.

But Slower and more painterly, and far less curious about the world outside the villa gates.

Call Me by Your Name poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Jules and Jim1962

Cuarón has cited Truffaut's freewheeling narration and love-triangle structure directly; both films use an all-knowing narrator hovering above a threesome mistaking freedom for permanence, and both know exactly how it ends before it begins.

The original blueprint for the doomed threesome road movie — glorious, sad, decades ahead of itself, and the reason this whole shape of film exists.

But Black-and-white, subtitled, 1962 pacing; if you need modern rhythm it'll feel like homework at first.

Jules and Jim poster
More like this (8)

The Dreamers2003

Bertolucci's threesome-in-Paris film shares the exact DNA — young bodies, political upheaval humming outside, a bubble that eventually has to pop.

But More explicit and more hermetic; the outside world barely gets a look in, which is both the point and the limitation.

The Dreamers poster

Roma2018

Cuarón again, turning his camera on the domestic worker his own family employed — the same fascination with class dividing a household, rendered with even more grief and patience.

But No road trip, no jokes, no sex — black-and-white, slow, and mournful where this one is loose-limbed and horny.

Roma poster

Before Sunrise1995

Strangers, a ticking clock, and hours of talk that turn out to be the whole point — proof a journey can be entirely about who's sitting next to you.

But Gentler and far less physical; nothing here will make you blush.

Before Sunrise poster

Stand by Me1986

Boys on a road testing each other, finding out what they're made of before adulthood catches up — the American cousin of this story, minus the sex.

But Nostalgic and PG where the Mexican film is frank and unsentimental about bodies.

Stand by Me poster

Weekend2011

Two men, a compressed timeline, conversation that gets more honest as the hours run out — small, intimate, heartbreaking in the same key.

But No landscape, no set pieces — this lives entirely in bedrooms and pub gardens.

Weekend poster

Little Miss Sunshine2006

If you just want another van, another dysfunctional crew, and another road trip that cracks everyone open, this is the friendlier, funnier cousin.

But Family-friendly and broadly comic; it never goes near the sex or the sadness underneath.

Little Miss Sunshine poster

Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara2011no page yet

Swap the beach for Spain and the tragedy for song and you've got the same skeleton: three friends on a trip, one quietly carrying news the others don't know, forced to actually live before it's too late.

A big, joyful Bollywood road trip that hides a gut-punch under the dance numbers — the same secret, the same reckoning, completely different emotional weather.

But Nearly three hours, musical, and unapologetically sentimental — if you wanted the original's sourness, this won't give it to you.

Sin Nombre2009

Same highways, same sense of a country glimpsed sideways from a moving vehicle — but here the journey is migrants fleeing north, and the Mexico the narrator only gestures at for Julio and Tenoch becomes the entire film.

The other road trip through Mexico — desperate instead of horny, life-or-death instead of a lark — and a gut-check reminder of who can't afford a beach vacation.

But Genuinely harrowing, with none of the humor or warmth; go in braced, not breezy.

Sin Nombre poster

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Recommended by

American Pie, Everybody Wants Some!!, Superbad, Roma, Sideways, Amores Perros, The Dreamers, Pierrot le Fou, Talk to Her, The Motorcycle Diaries, Conversations with Friends, Jules and Jim