Solo Con Tu Pareja

Solo Con Tu Pareja

Alfonso Cuaron’s Love in The Time of Hysteria (AKA: Solo Con Tu Pareja) is a sex comedy made some time before his better known film, Y Tu Mama Tambien.   Cuaron is also known for directing one of the Harry Potter films, The Prisoner of Azkaban. Love in the Time of Hysteria, (the American title) is a takeoff of the title Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.   The hysteria spoken of is the hysteria over AIDS (SIDA in Latin America).   The original title Solo Con Tu Pareja (Only With Your Partner), is derived from public service announcements that recommended restraining one’s sex life and using condoms. Although financed by the Mexican Government, the film is anything but a reasoned argument for abstinence.  
The movie is an interesting tale of a man discovering his true self. The main character of the film, Tomas Tomas (yes, really) is a gigolo who longs to break free from his wanton lifestyle and find peace with the girl of his dreams. Tomas is a writer for an advertising company who gets away with procrastination on the job because he’s sleeping with his boss, Gloria. His apartment is two doors from his doctor, Mateo Mateos, and he takes advantage of his neighbor’s absence to simultaneously seduce both Gloria and the doctor’s assistant, Silvia Silva. While sneaking across the balcony, Tomas sees a new neighbor, airline stewardess Clarisa and falls hopelessly in love. Although the girl of his dreams seems to be whoever is closest at the moment, the beautiful girl that just moved in next door drives him crazy with desire.   His plan to make Clarisa his new love, of course, has some flaws. She is engaged to an airline pilot, and Doctor Mateos and his wife laugh at Tomas’s profession of true love. Worst of all, Silvia Silva decides that the appropriate retaliation for being short-changed in bed is to send Tomas a fake blood test notice that marks him positive for AIDS.
Tomas’s friends eventually rush to assure him that he’s really okay, but when they...