--- title: "Sólo con tu pareja" year: 1992 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/solo-con-tu-pareja" fi1m_score: 72 critics_score: 74 critics_reviews: 6 published: "2026-09-20T09:14:39.735768+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T09:14:40.181878+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Sólo con tu pareja (1992) Directed by Alfonso Cuarón · 1h 34m · Drama, Comedy, Romance **Fi1m score: 72** · Critics 74 from 6 reviews *In a sentence:* Bedroom farce in a building with a useful ledge, scored to Mozart and shadowed by a blood test > Alfonso Cuarón’s first film is a quick, rude, handsome bedroom farce with a false HIV diagnosis dropped into the middle of it. The farce is well done and the diagnosis is not, and the film is worth an evening for the former. ## Synopsis Mexico City. Tomás Tomás (Daniel Giménez Cacho) writes television adverts for a living, is currently selling a brand of jalapeños with Hernán Cortés (Rodolfo Arias) and Moctezuma (Víctor Carpinteiro) as its pitchmen, and spends his nights on women he has no intention of seeing twice. One evening he has two of them in two flats in the same building: Silvia Silva (Dobrina Cristeva), a nurse who works for his doctor neighbour Mateo Mateos (Luis de Icaza), and Gloria Gold (Isabel Benet), his boss. Between the flats runs a ledge. Silvia does not take the night well, and a blood test result soon reaches Tomás telling him he is HIV positive. The audience knows before he does that it is false. Then Clarisa Negrete (Claudia Ramírez), a flight attendant with a pilot fiancé, moves in across the way. ## Review Alfonso Cuarón’s first film is a bedroom farce and it opens like one. Tomás Tomás (Daniel Giménez Cacho) is a Mexico City advertising copywriter with a nurse in one flat and his boss in another, on the same night, and the building has a ledge. Written by Cuarón with his brother Carlos Cuarón and running 94 minutes, *Sólo con tu pareja* is fast and confident and worth your evening. It also wants to be a film about death, and there it is much less sure of itself. The opening set piece is the best thing in it. Tomás edges along the outside of the building in his underwear between Silvia Silva (Dobrina Cristeva) and Gloria Gold (Isabel Benet), and Emmanuel Lubezki’s camera goes with him, sliding along the wall, in through windows, over beds, with a freedom most debuts cannot afford and this one plainly did not care about affording. We laughed out loud at the second crossing, not at the gag, which is old, but at the camera catching him mid-ledge with the face of a man who has run out of plan. Luis Patlán, editing with Cuarón, cuts the whole night to Mozart, and the cheerfulness of the music against the panic on screen is the film’s joke in miniature. Then the shadow arrives. Silvia, humiliated, works in the surgery of Tomás’s neighbour and friend Mateo Mateos (Luis de Icaza), and she sees to it that a blood test result reaches Tomás saying he is HIV positive. We know it is false before he does. He does not, and he begins, with a seriousness he has brought to nothing else in his life, to plan how to die. At the same moment Clarisa Negrete (Claudia Ramírez), a flight attendant with a pilot fiancé, moves in across the way, and he falls for her just as he decides he has no right to. This was a bold thing to attempt in 1992 and we admired the nerve more than the result. Lubezki shoots the scenes of Tomás working out his own death in the same warm evening light as the seductions, and Brigitte Broch’s flat, cluttered surfaces and a bed that has plainly seen use, does not change when his mood does. Perhaps that is the point, that the world goes on looking pretty. But it means the death material never gets its own weight, and the film hurries back to a door slamming as soon as it can. We felt uneasy in these stretches, and not in the way the film meant us to: a womaniser handed a fake diagnosis of a disease then killing a great many people is a darker premise than the brothers seem to have noticed they were writing, and they keep treating it as a plot device. What holds it together is Giménez Cacho. He plays Tomás as a man who is charming because he has never needed to be anything else, and he lets the charm run down in front of us without once asking to be liked. Claudia Ramírez has less to work with; Clarisa is written as the good woman who arrives to cure him. She plays her dry and unbothered anyway, and the film wakes up when she is in frame. Astrid Hadad, as Mateo’s wife Teresa de Teresa, gets the sharpest lines in the building. Luis de Icaza makes the doctor a decent man permanently one step behind his own neighbours. The weakest strand is the advert. Tomás is writing a television commercial for a brand of jalapeños with Hernán Cortés (Rodolfo Arias) and Moctezuma (Víctor Carpinteiro) selling the product, and it is a good joke about Mexican history and Mexican advertising exactly once. The film goes back to it. The slapstick in the middle third, the near-misses and wrong rooms, is stock, and Cuarón directs it as if he knows. Carlos Warman’s own music, in the gaps between the Mozart, does its job and no more. Anyone coming to this from Cuarón’s later films will recognise the camera that will not sit still and the interest in sex as a way of finding out who people are. What is missing is the patience. He had the friend behind the lens who could already do anything, and an idea about mortality he had not yet earned. Watch it as a debut, and watch the first twenty minutes twice. The ledge alone is worth it. *Fi1m score 72, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say The reviews lean warmly positive, with five of six recommending Cuarón’s debut. Most critics take it as a bawdy bedroom farce and find it consistently funny, sexy and well acted. The praise clusters on the camera: the playful, energetic movement comes up in nearly every review, along with the vivid picture of Mexico City and the wit of the dialogue. Several also single out the satire of Mexican machismo and the middle classes, and the early set pieces built around the hero’s overlapping affairs. The reservations are about weight rather than skill. Several critics call it lighter and thinner than Cuarón’s later films, and a couple find it one-note. The New York Times thinks the comedy never quite fuses with the darker material about illness and death. The AV Club is the lone mixed voice, admiring the look but finding the story frothy and the slapstick stale. Otherwise the spread is narrow, with Film Comment the most enthusiastic, calling it an audacious and enduring farce. ### Reviews we read (6) - **Film Comment**, José Teodoro (90/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as an enduring and audacious boudoir farce that satirizes Mexican machismo and the bourgeoisie through its witty protagonist and cultural clichés. It singles out the film's unusual embrace of chilango colloquialisms and inventive details for praise. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/article/the-turning-of-the-earth/) - **IndieWire**, Greg Cwik (B): The piece calls it a good little film that is well-acted and laced with Cuarón’s evolving wicked sense of humor. It praises the lush photography, playful camera movement, and witty wordplay while noting it feels lighter than his later work. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/article/the-films-of-alfonso-cuaron-ranked-from-worst-to-best-20141128) - **Slant Magazine**, Ed Gonzalez (75/100, inferred): The critic finds the bawdy comedy consistently funny and sexy despite feeling a little one-note. He singles out the energetic, poppy camera maneuvers and rich cultural flavor for praise. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/solo-con-tu-pareja/) - **Time Out**, Tom Beer (75/100, inferred): The critic calls Cuarón's debut a fizzy comedic romp that holds up well despite being less rich than his later work. He singles out the inventive early set pieces involving the protagonist's simultaneous romantic entanglements and the cheerful Mozart score. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/slo-con-tu-pareja) - **The New York Times**, A.O. Scott (70/100, inferred): The critic finds Cuarón's debut a rambunctious sex comedy shadowed by mortality that mixes bedroom farce with darker elements, though it does not fully succeed in fusing belly laughs with the horror of illness and death. He singles out the director's cheeky self-confidence along with the dexterity of the camera movements and flair for both low comedy and high melodrama. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/20/movies/20solo.html) - **The AV Club**, Noel Murray (60/100, inferred): The review notes the film is streaked with highlights and flaws from Cuarón’s career, praising its sexy, visually poetic qualities and vibrant depiction of Mexico City. It complains about the frothy story, TV-ad parodies, and stale slapstick. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/solo-con-tu-pareja-clean-shaven-1798202086) ## Details - **Director:** Alfonso Cuarón - **Director:** Alfonso Cuarón - **Screenplay:** Alfonso Cuarón, Carlos Cuarón - **Cinematography:** Emmanuel Lubezki - **Editor:** Alfonso Cuarón, Luis Patlán - **Music:** Carlos Warman - **Production design:** Brigitte Broch - **Producer:** Alfonso Cuarón - **Cast:** Daniel Giménez Cacho as Tomás Tomás; Claudia Ramírez as Clarisa Negrete; Luis de Icaza as Mateo Mateos; Astrid Hadad as Teresa de Teresa; Dobrina Cristeva as Silvia Silva; Isabel Benet as Gloria Gold; Luz María Jerez as Paola; Monserrat Ontiveros as Mrs. Panza - **Runtime:** 1h 34m - **Release (the US):** 20 September 2006 - **Genres:** Drama, Comedy, Romance - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca2X2Ztj_MA ## Where to watch in the US Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check. ## If you liked this - *Y tu mamá también* (2001), Fi1m 87: Cuarón and Lubezki return to sex and mortality with the patience this one lacks. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/y-tu-mama-tambien.md) - *The Apartment* (1960), Fi1m 91: Another flat, another borrowed bed, and a farce that takes despair seriously. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-apartment.md) - *Smiles of a Summer Night* (1955): Bergman’s bedroom comedy, where the lovers swap rooms and the mood swaps with them. - *Harold and Maude* (1971), Fi1m 81: A young man rehearses his own death and is interrupted by falling in love. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/harold-and-maude.md) - *Amores perros* (2000), Fi1m 85: Mexico City again, shot with the same restlessness, and much less inclined to joke. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/amores-perros.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/solo-con-tu-pareja