Reviews

"Solo con tu pareja" or "Love in the Time of Hysteria" is an at-times outrageously funny black sex comedy from director Alfonso Cuarón. Its themes include the possibility of finding true love and the impact of AIDS on people's sex lives and psyches. This was especially timely in 1991 when AIDS was only beginning to fully enter public consciousness, but of course, it remains an important issue. The story itself, although I won't go into details, is clever and fulfilling. The performance of the cast is very good, especially Daniel Cacho, who is very believable as the perennial casanova Tomás Tomás, and Claudia Ramírez, who plays the pert, sultry flight attendant, Clarisa. Reminding me of Nabokov's Humbert Humbert, Cuarón plays with double names of many characters, including the cut-up doctor Mateos Mateos and his wife Teresa de Teresa. The editing is done in such a way that the film felt lived-in, familiar, as if life was going on inside it. For instance, the first time we meet the doctor and his wife, Tomás calls them and we see them out of the window, showing that they live in an adjacent apartment and are good friends. The cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki is beautiful, with very fine tracking shots, like the opening scene or in the woods at the wedding.