Rudo y Cursi
When getting your kicks is the only goal
'Rudo y Cursi" is a grave and calculated affront to the men of Mexico, and that's the source of its roistering charm. A soccer story in which, perversely, the game itself is rarely shown, the movie's democratic in spirit - everyone goes home a loser. But what can you expect, asks writer-director Carlos Cuaron, of a country where all the men are big he-man babies?
Cuaron is making his directorial debut here; he's best known for writing the 2001 hit "Y Tu Mamá También," which was directed by his brother Alfonso ("Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"). It's a promising start; if Carlos isn't a breathtaking cinematic stylist like his sibling, he knows exactly who his characters are and the machismo-addled culture in which they struggle to keep afloat.
It helps that he also has the two young stars of "Y Tu Mama," reunited for the first time since that breakthrough. In the first film, Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna played reckless teenagers getting high on sex and bravado. Here, they're just boneheads - country bumpkin half-brothers who miraculously get a shot at futbol stardom just when it seems their options are winding down.
Beto (Luna) is nicknamed "Rudo" for his hotheaded behavior in and out of the goal box; he's not above punching out opposing players if it'll even the odds. Tata (Bernal) is the dreamer, a wannabe singer and full-time little boy whose delighted victory dance after scoring goals earns him the nickname "Cursi," roughly translated as "tacky but kind of cute." Discovered when an opportunistic sports agent (Guillermo Francella) has a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, they're whisked off the banana plantation into the big time. The agent's weary narration provides the film with its philosophy of self-interest.
The joke isn't that Rudo and Cursi are woefully unprepared for fame but that the entire country is high on the fumes of empty celebrity and fast bucks. Both the agent and the sexy TV superstar (Jessica Mas) who becomes Cursi's trophy girlfriend let slip their pasts as nobodies clawing their way out of poverty. Rudo's wife conscripts her husband into a pyramid sales program (a satirical version of a real-life Mexican company) even as the goalie's ears prick up at the siren call of the gambling table.
What matters is only the next goal, the next winning streak, the next hit record. For the endearingly fatuous Cursi, the peak arrives with his accordion-driven music video of the old Cheap Trick hit "I Want You to Want Me," delivered with Spanish lyrics that become the movie's taunting refrain. For all the cockfights and cauterizingly foul language, everyone here is terrified of being lost in the crowd.
Cuaron relates the brothers' rise and fall at a droll comic remove, and he purposefully keeps the cameras off the field, the better to focus on reality rather than the illusions sustaining an entire nation. Although he builds to a rip-roaring climax - Rudo and Cursi facing each other over a single penalty kick with both their reputations and deeply leveraged lives at stake - the movie lacks a larger sense of surprise that would kick it up to the level of a classic. There's a deeper and more powerful melancholy here that's never quite admitted to.
Still, the performances are engaging, and Luna's a standout; even his mustache is funny. This changeling actor, less a born movie star but more of an actor than Bernal, lets us see the thirsty hick hopeful under his character's gruff exterior. (It's not Luna's fault he nearly hijacked "Milk" as Harvey's suicidal lover; the character was supposed to be annoying.) Rudo's a more tragic figure than Cursi only because he has a nagging sense that things could have been so very different.
All the tatty paradoxes of "Rudo y Cursi" are captured in a brief and very amusing scene toward the end in which two thugs threaten to murder Cursi if he loses the big game - and then ask for his autograph. They're killers and they're fans, grown men and yearning boys, and Cuaron says his country is full of such people.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. For more on movies, go to www.boston.com/movienation. 