You Owe Me One (2002) User Reviews

A Sexual Farce

[gavin6942 · 9/10 · 13 September 2014]

A family of three, plus the maid and daughter's boyfriend look pretty normal on the outside. But in actuality, the are all having affairs with each other. The boyfriend is sleeping with the mother and daughter, and the father is sleeping with the maid. Do they all know about each other's affairs?

Short films have little time to grab your attention. And then they have the burden of telling a whole story, leaving you wanting more, without leaving you feeling the film was incomplete. "You Owe me One" nails the short film requirements. Funny, clever, beautifully-shot, and wrapped up in a mere twelve minutes.

Alfonso Cuaron has become well known for his directing, but maybe it is time that his brother Carlos gets equal praise. People ought to see this short film, as well as his feature-length works (such as "Rudo y Cursi").

Religion=Sex

[belgamino · 1 October 2004]

After the screenplay of Y tu mama tambien (and your mother too), Carlos Cuarón pursues his critic of the new Mexican high class society, this time through out the filter of religion. The first 4 minutes of the film announce the tricky structure of this short. The protagonist of the short is not the father who open the film by his entry in the house, or the sequence of him getting his clothes out in front of the closet. The real protagonist is the one seeing the father getting undressed and the one ending the film by his scream. So is the house full of religious representations but not full of quite pious people. In anti religious way Cuarón tells us to not believe all we see.

Funny but shoddily made

[Polaris_DiB · 5/10 · 5 March 2007]

Carlos Cuaron, brother of Alfonso Cuaron and co-writer of Y Tu Mama Tambien, attempts a high-spirited (pardon my pun) and satirical look at a family all caught up with infidelity, who all "owe" each other things in sort of disturbing but mostly hilarious incestual interrelationships.

Watching this short, I couldn't help but be reminded of those infamous Mexican soap operas, the deranged relationships from which this movie seems to tap to humorous effect. There's also some pretty good groaners in this one, showing Carlos to be a very whimsical type of guy.

The short itself isn't that well done. It's obviously cheaply done, and they couldn't quite get the sound right. But it strikes me as the type of film someone does in order to get familiar with the equipment and then move on to do other things. It's inclusion on the Y Tu Mama Tambien DVD is interesting, but hardly as qualitative as perhaps some other commentary on the feature-length film.

--PolarisDiB