Rudo y Cursi is a new Spanish-language film written and
directed by Carlos Cuarón (co-writer of 2001’s brilliant Y tu
mamá también) in his feature debut. Carlos is the
brother of the great director Alfonso Cuarón (Y tu
mamá and Children of Men), and he produces Rudo y
Cursi with his fellow prominent Mexican filmmakers, Guillermo del
Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu.

The film is also the big-screen reunion of actors Gael García
Bernal and Diego Luna, the young men who set the screen on fire with
Y tu mamá and have since had fine careers apart from each
other.

With a pedigree that lousy with talent, one might think that Rudo
y Cursi would be the most staggeringly brilliant movie of the year.
It’s not, so lower your expectations at will. But the movie is tons of
fun, well-acted and made, with a story that’s highly consumable even if
it doesn’t tilt the earth on its axis.

Beto (Luna) and Tato (Bernal) are brothers in rural Mexico. They
work the banana plantation during the week and dominate the local
dirtpatch soccer field on weekends. Beto, married with a child, can’t
give up his childhood dream of playing professional soccer. Tato,
single, has athletic talent but really wants to be a singer.

After a chance encounter with a talent scout, Batuta (Guillermo
Francella), the brothers’ dreams are suddenly in reach. But he can only
take one of them to the pros. From this grain of conflict, Beto and
Tato set out on a course of antagonism writ large across the
high-profile panoply of Mexican professional soccer.

Curiously, there’s a minute amount of soccer on screen in Rudo y
Cursi. The film isn’t about the sport so much as it is about its
effect on the characters. Like another recent film, Sugar,
Rudo y Cursi kicks most sports-film tropes to the curb.

Batuta narrates, bestowing upon the film a world-wise, charming
universality. “Wars are mistaken for games and games for wars,” Batuta
says. And: “Love for a mother and a uniform are the same.”

I’m no fan of soccer, but when the sport finally does make an
appearance late in the film, I was compelled to suspend my disbelief.
Rudo y Cursi‘s climax is as entertaining as any American
athletic event I’ve watched recently. And then you trot out of the
theater humming a Hispanicized “I Want You To Want Me,” and things are
right with the world.

Rudo y Cursi

Opens Friday, June 12th

Ridgeway Four