MEET Julio and Tenoch (Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna), best boyhood buddies, 17 and itchy as the Mexico City heat.

Cocky but still in their milk-teeth years sexually, they try to get jiggy with the voluptuous Luisa (Maribel Verdu) at a high society wedding. She is beautiful, Spanish, distracted, has something of Carmen about her unhappiness, and she's married. Does she fancy joining them on a trip to a wondrous, mythical beach off the beaten track (so far off, it doesn't actually exist, but don't tell her that!)?

Down boys, she says at first, but once she discovers her husband's latest infidelity, she agrees to go and so starts a road movie and coming-of-age drama that combines innocence with knowing wit and a zesty, sexiness to rival the joyously liberated Spanish work of Pedro Almodovar.

The experienced Luisa dispenses rather more than merely lessons in life; there is a homo-erotic undercurrent beneath the boys' machismo front, and a jolting sting in the tale that makes Alfonso Cuaron's truthful, frank, horny joyride far more than a Mexican Beavis And Butthead.

Updated: 10:27 Friday, April 26, 2002