Written by: Carlos Cuarón & Alfonso Cuarón
Starring: Daniel Giménez Cacho, Claudia Ramírez, Luis de Icaza, Dobrina Liubomirova
Rating: [3.5/5]
Playing with the hearts and emotions of others runs the very real risk that you may receive the same right back at you. Something creating a sort of reckoning for the lead character in Solo Con Tu Pareja as it serves as the feature film debut of quite a special filmmaker and demonstrates the playfulness he displays early on in his illustrious career.
Living out his days as an abundant bachelor Tomás (Daniel Giménez Cacho) typically engages in sexual relationships with multiple women at a time. Something he quite enjoys, but receives a bit of a complication when he hears news of a positive AIDS test from a lover he has scorned. While devastated by the news, he has no clue it’s a fake result utilized as a form of revenge.
Quite the playful feature in regards to the relationships at its center, Solo Con Tu Pareja brings us quite the lead character in Tomás. Someone who evidently has the looks to pull off this bachelor lifestyle but still goes about it in the wrong way by causing pain to those looking for something much more monogamous than he can currently offer. He sees them as affairs while the women he engages in these sexual activities with see it as a bit more. This causes the inciting incident leading to him receiving a false positive test for something he sees as an ultimately damaging dagger to his life. This leads him to a downward spiral that sets us up to laugh until it gets awfully serious.
Of the different women he has these affairs with, he carries a different type of affection for them on top of the power dynamics on display. One of the relationships involves Tomás and his very own boss, which does raise some eyebrows. Each relationship sits on this scale of the scandal and how much the knowledge of him two-timing them will eventually leave an impact. As a result, this feature sits as an apt modern approach to the story of Cassanova as this man with seemingly no morals, but he does find the one woman he would love to pursue exclusively but cannot because of two reasons: his recent perceived diagnosis but also the fact she’s engaged. Thus we have a man who can practically gain the affection of any woman he desires except for the one he most deeply wants.
The playfulness of this feature allows a balance for when it gets to some darker elements of the story including what Tomás thinks of doing because of his diagnosis. This silliness exists in every scene, which includes the particularly strange tradition he has of running to grab his newspaper in the nude before anyone else can see him. Alfonso Cuarón has a great handle on the story in this regard. The absurdity of Tomás makes him quite lovable where even when he does unsavory things, like two-timing these women, he has this levity to his demeanor making him an interesting character to follow.
This certainly gets helped along by such a fun performance given by Daniel Giménez Cacho, who works everything about Tomás to be quite comedic. From all of the rituals to the general demeanor of the character, Cacho embraces all of the faults and quirks of the character as we navigate this tumultuous time in his life. He helps sell this character’s plight as something we should care for, especially in the way Tomás longs for Clarisa (Claudia Ramírez) despite all of the current circumstances preventing him from doing so. A strange sweetness begins to emerge for him, which shows a little bit of growth for the character, which works just fine for this narrative.
Quite desperate from his other features in tone, but so much fun, Alfonso Cuarón’s Solo Con Tu Pareja gives us some wonderful characters to follow. Everything in this feature centers on sexual relations and how it relates to the emotions of these characters. Things go off the rails in such a fun way as the consequences of the actions here begin to come to the forefront needing the characters involved to make the decision of fessing up to what they did or something drastic to occur. We get a wonderful lead performance from Daniel Giménez Cacho as this Cassanova type but with a heart navigating in the right direction, as we hope he figures it all out before it’s too late to change course.
Films with Josh 
