07 · 03 · 25

TÚ, YO, NOSOTROS: Ortega, Torres, Fons

Rafael Aviña

In Tú [You], Silvia (Rita Macedo) is an intense and attractive 38-year-old alcoholic woman, mother of the young Nadia (Julissa) and Carlitos, and the wife of the masochistic, violent, and insecure Carlos (Carlos Ancira)—a man who wears a ridiculous wig. She endures her unhappy marriage while unable to forget her past lover, Octavio (Guillermo Murray), a painter she once looked down on before he departed abroad. Her relationship with her daughter is also troubled. When Octavio returns to México, he comes across Carlos, who insists that Silvia meet with him to complain to her. In the second chapter, Yo [I], Julián Enríquez (the splendid Sergio Jiménez), Nadia's ex-boyfriend, is a young crop-dusting pilot who abandoned painting and architecture. He returns to México City after his mother’s death and an accident that almost ended his life. He searches for Nadia, who now sings in a cabaret, and they become casual lovers despite her upcoming marriage to the wealthy young Adrián (Carlos Cortés). Julián's paralysed father, who uses a wheelchair (Pancho Córdova), confesses that Julián's mother had saved the money Julián sent for him to finish his architecture studies. Still, his father refuses to let him use it for other purposes. Julián abandons his father on the balcony during a rainy evening. After being rescued by Nadia, Julián's father stops speaking to him. In Nosotros [We], Julián becomes the lover of Nadia's mother: Silvia. Their passion is both intense and suffocating, particularly when Silvia notices her younger partner's strange temperament, who decides to return to painting. After some time, Silvia and Julián find happiness together, but Carlos reappears with plans to get his wife back. After a heated argument among the three, everything ends tragically.

"A mother, a daughter, and a stranger who loves them in a brutal but tender... absolute, and fragile way." Tú, yo, nosotros [You, I, We] (1970) was advertised with this phrase, a prominent film that contained moments that were, in short, disturbing—but especially, sincere and capable of breaking the melodramatic and moralistic conventions of the period. Directors Gonzalo Martínez Ortega and Juan Manuel Torres started in the industry with this film; Jorge Fons had already filmed the episode La sorpresa from Trampas de amor in 1968, before debuting in the feature film industry with El quelite (1969). The first episode introduces the characters effectively. However, Yo and Nosotros maintain a stimulating and turbulent intensity that builds until it reaches a brutal climax, shattering the nonexistent "happiness" found only in those moments of joy we insist on calling love. Despite Fons' considerable technical and narrative ability to provide closure to the plot, Juan Manuel Torres' chapter offers exceptional assertiveness and naturalist dialogue. It also provides us with the most sensitive and disturbing scenes. 

This is shown in the image of Julissa and Jiménez lying on the bed after making love, then reading some papers. This image is almost a tracing of a scene and the publicity poster for Bed & Board (dir. Francois Truffaut, 1970), which was released in France in September 1970 but in México until 1972. Since the shooting of Tú, Yo, Nosotros began at the end of November, Torres had likely watched the film. More likely, however, is that he saw the poster and was inspired by it, or that Truffaut and he simply coincided in their vision. The scenes at the airfield are disturbing, especially when Julián meets his former architect colleagues who have already graduated. One colleague, played by Mario Casillas, shows him photos of his apartment, his wife, his children, his television, and the refrigerator he is going to buy. Later, at the inauguration of his small office, Jiménez is beaten up by Casillas and his friends after Julián makes an indecent proposal to Casillas’ sister.  

Julián is a man who seems burdened by huge frustration, which leads him to experience violent episodes. This frustration probably also puts his sexuality on edge and gives Julián a lewd instinct that leads him to insistently pick the young lady who assisted him at UNAM up (Dunia Saldívar), as well as Casilla's sister, Nadia, and, principally, Silvia—Nadia's mother, who has an impressive sensuality and beauty, for whom he feels an erotic obsession. Silvia initially rejected him after her daughter's wedding, but later she participates actively when Julián tells her that her daughter was his past lover. Of all the scenes, the most subversive one—even more than the sexual scene between Jiménez and Macedo—is when Julián, furious with his father for denying him the money Julián used to send to his mother, leaves him tied to his wheelchair on the balcony in the middle of a storm. Even worse, Julián places a lightning rod on one of his father's arms.

Fons' chapter unites the desperate and frustrated love story of the prodigal son and the sexually neglected mother. Not only that, the chapter includes other terrible scenes, such as the one in which Julián, fed up with his father's refusal to speak to him since the rain episode, forces his mature lover to make love in front of the paralysed father, who maintains his forced silence. Another disturbing scene occurs when the clumsy Mexican Social Security Institute stretcher-bearer accidentally hits the father, and Julián immediately beats him up before the anger of the gorgeous and splendid actress Claudia Millán, who plays a doctor—she had a very short career (La Sunamita, dir. Héctor Mendoza, 1965). 

Finally, the film features delirious, almost dreamlike scenes, including the one where Macedo and Jiménez watch a film-within-the-film, where Margie Bermejo sings in a western bar. At the same time, two wealthy men argue (Toni Sbert and Ludwik Margules). The followers of a “white” bandit (Mario García González) and a “black” bandit (Ernesto Gómez Cruz) engage in gunfights, and the final sequence of Carlos' attack on Silvia and Julián, amidst cans of colored paint. This is a sensitive and moving film, with its remarkable soundtrack by Manuel Enríquez. The film won the Ariel Awards for Best Direction (Nosotros episode), Best Actress (Rita Macedo), and Best Supporting Actor (Pancho Córdova).
 

Translated by Abigail Puebla