Mexico’s best buddies take on a new romp

Oversexed, underfed, overgrown adolescents.

That’s how Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal appeared when they hit the road together in “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” the 2002 coming-of-age story that gave the young Mexican actors a following in global cinema and remains possibly their best-known work.

In the seven years since, they’ve moved beyond the puppy-dog cute, hormonally hyperactive characters they played in Alfonso Cuaron’s film, tackling such career-stretching roles as a legendary South American revolutionary (Garcia Bernal in “The Motorcycle Diaries”) and a gay-rights activist’s lover (Luna in “Milk”). They’ve also formed a film production company, Canana Films, with their partner Pancho Cruz, and a traveling documentary film festival, Ambulante, selections from which will screen in June as part of the Los Angeles Film Festival.

But what may be most surprising about their career trajectories is that, until now, they’d resisted numerous pitches to reteam on screen.

“ ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’ was very special, and we were quite wary, or let’s say careful, of what we were going to do next together,” Garcia Bernal said recently during a lunch interview, with Luna, at a Beverly Hills hotel. “Of course we had a lot of propositions of acting together in films that were sort of, kind of in a way perverted remakes of ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien.’ And even more perverted than ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’ -- that’s tough to beat, no?”

Finally, the actors found a project that tempted them to reunite that didn’t feel like “Y Tu Mama Tambien” redux. “Rudo y Cursi” (Tough and Corny), which opened Friday in Los Angeles and New York, tells the fictional tale of two soccer-loving brothers from poor, rural Mexico who, through a rare stroke of luck and a quasi-Faustian pact with the a mysterious talent scout, become star players. Yet overnight success proves to be a mixed blessing for the siblings, and a threat to their brotherly bond.

“Rudo y Cursi” was written and directed by Alfonso Cuaron’s younger brother, Carlos, who also wrote “Y Tu Mama Tambien.” Both Cuaron brothers, as well as Luna and Garcia Bernal, belong to a kind of extended filmic fraternity that also includes directors Guillermo del Toro (“Pan’s Labyrinth”) and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (“Amores Perros”). As a group, they’ve known and collaborated with one another for years, contributing in no small measure to one another’s success as well as to the continuing resurgence of Mexican cinema over the last several years.

Reflecting those long-standing personal ties, “Rudo y Cursi” will be the first movie put out by Cha Cha Cha Films, a new production company formed by Gonzalez Inarritu, Del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron (often referred to as the Three Amigos) that has a distribution and marketing deal with Universal Pictures. Not coincidentally, the filmmakers say, brotherly love and brotherly competition have been constant themes, both on and off the “Rudo y Cursi” set, from the moment the project was conceived.

“I wanted to explore the theme of brotherhood and sibling rivalry,” said Carlos Cuaron, 42. “When we were kids, yeah, [Alfonso] decided that he wanted to be a film director when he was like 12, and so I became his prop, his stunt man, whatever that inflicted pain on me was good, you know. So that part of the two brothers, you know, Rudo and Cursi picking each other and nagging each other and bothering each other, yeah, that’s me and Alfonso. But that’s also like every sibling relationship I know.”

Alfonso Cuaron, 47, said the fraternal themes of “Rudo y Cursi” made the film a perfect choice for Cha Cha Cha’s debut. He thinks the movie also marks an acting milestone of sorts for its two leads.

“Until ‘Rudo y Cursi,’ pretty much they were performing young adults in the films that they’ve been doing,” he said. “And [this is] the first time that you see like a manly Diego, you know, a guy who’s a man, not the sensitive young adult. I think he gives his best performance.”

Garcia Bernal and Luna agree that they’re in quite a different place than they were when they made “Y Tu Mama.” No longer itinerant bachelors, they’ve recently become family men and fathers, businessmen as well as performing artists. Garcia Bernal already has turned 30; Luna will get there later this year.

Though many of their peers have migrated to Hollywood, Europe or elsewhere, both actors still call Mexico home. That has helped them alternate between making Mexican and foreign films, and switch back and forth on screen from Spanish to English (Luna in “Milk”), French (Garcia Bernal in Michel Gondry’s “The Science of Sleep”) or whatever else may be required. Garcia Bernal thinks it may even be an advantage, paradoxically, for an actor not to have English as a first language. “It allows us to go forth in different languages, in different cultures, and sort of be more free in that sense,” he said. Back in 2002, they were former child stars of Mexican telenovelas who had outgrown the lucrative but cliched confines of the soap opera format and were restlessly searching for new challenges. Like their characters in “Rudo y Cursi,” they also had to cope at a relatively early age with sudden fame and its seductions.

“When I was 16 I was not ready at all, and I did many stupid things,” Luna said. “But also I had like a very strong structure, like my relation with my father and with my friends kind of saved me in many ways.”

Both actors credit their older cinema colleagues with helping them mature creatively. “We didn’t question it when Carlos told us about the story [of “Rudo y Cursi”], because these guys were the ones that introduced us to the wonderful world of cinema, in a way,” said Garcia Bernal, who has appeared in two of Gonzalez Inarritu’s films, “Amores Perros” (2001) and “Babel” (2006).

Even so, Garcia Bernal and Luna said, their surrogate-family relations with their older colleagues aren’t fixed, but rather constantly in flux. During a recent gathering at a Los Angeles media junket (minus Gonzalez Inarritu, who’s in Spain editing his latest movie, “Biutiful,” with Javier Bardem), the friends traded banter and the inside jokes, nicknames and gentle mocking flowed freely.

Luna describes Del Toro, who has taken up residence with his family in New Zealand while shooting “The Hobbit,” as “like that cousin you love, that you just get to see every Christmas . . . but that every time he comes you start immediately where you left it.

“And Alfonso goes from being the father to being the young brother, you know, in a second. He says something really wise and tells you what’s good, what’s wrong, and gives the right advice, but then a second later he becomes this 15-year-old kid that you have to say, ‘Hey, stop it, no! Don’t do that!’ ”

Carlos Cuaron said both actors have developed considerably since he worked with them on “Y Tu Mama,” “besides the fact that they don’t have pimples anymore and they have hair on their faces.”

“But not only as actors, because obviously they became stronger actors with more tools and resources and things,” Cuaron said. “Also in their personal lives, how they now have families and they have babies.”

There was one other notable difference between the two films, the director added, with a smile. “They don’t kiss in this one.”

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reed.johnson@latimes.com