Return of the Mexican intercourse bombs: Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna on their boxing comedy La Máquina

Forget Oasis: there’s a extra dynamic reunion on the town. Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, the lifelong mates who first paired up on display to play oversexed youngsters in Alfonso Cuarón’s 2001 highway film Y Tu Mamá También, are again. Not like the Gallagher brothers, Bernal and Luna by no means fell out or turned estranged. For 20 years now, they’ve co-run a documentary movie pageant and two manufacturing corporations of their native capital Mexico Metropolis. Their appearing collaborations, although, have been few and much between, with solely the soccer-based Rudo y Cursi and the eccentric Will Ferrell automobile Casa de mi Padre to their title since Cuarón’s vibrant hit climaxed with them tumbling into mattress collectively.

In 2010, the pair started sketching out a script concept a few prizefighter and his supervisor, which they felt would match them like a boxing glove. However life and work stored getting in the best way: Bernal has three youngsters, Luna two. Their careers have additionally change into extra business. Bernal performed a flamboyant conductor in 4 collection of Mozart within the Jungle, and starred within the Marvel TV film Werewolf By Evening, whereas Luna reprised his position because the hero of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story within the TV spin-off Andor, which not too long ago completed filming its second collection.

In spite of everything that point, their punchy six-part comedy-drama La Máquina is lastly right here, with Bernal as Estéban, an ageing slugger coaxed again into the ring by Andy (Luna), his useless and reckless supervisor, who’s menaced by sinister underworld forces. Most sports activities narratives are dominated by the athlete on the centre however the crises in La Máquina are evenly distributed. Droll enhancing – such because the sudden lower from Estéban on a romantic date to a shot of him loud night breathing in mattress later that night – reminds us that he’s no pollo primavera. Troubling hallucinations point out that his issues aren’t purely bodily. In the meantime Andy, who has a borderline incestuous relationship along with his mom, is chasing his misplaced youth with fixed Botox top-ups, which have left him with what one character describes as a “condom-face”.

“I used to be shocked by how a lot Diego loved the prosthetics,” grins the 45-year-old Bernal, lounging on the couch in a London lodge suite and sporting a powerful badger-coloured beard. He’s dressed as we speak in a good, chocolate-coloured jumper, black go well with trousers with a fuzzy brown pin-stripe and black Chelsea boots.

Perched in a chair reverse, dressed all in black save for white trainers, is Luna, who’s a yr Bernal’s junior. “It’s uncommon for me to vary my look like that,” he says. “However I believed, ‘That is the movie to actually go there.’ Not simply go there however to let myself go nuts. Andy’s having a response to the modifications in communication in our time. With social media, all of us are being seen on a regular basis. That wasn’t how issues had been when Andy began out, and he falls into the lure of eager to be within the entrance line. He’s going by means of what we’re going by means of, apart from him it’s terrifying.”

What Bernal and Luna are going by means of is center age. It’s a theme that didn’t happen to both of them after they first conceived La Máquina of their early 30s, but it surely emerged organically from the fabric. “The thought got here out the extra we talked about it,” says Bernal. “And the extra we seemed within the mirror,” laughs Luna.

“Precisely,” Bernal agrees. “Again within the day, I might get right down to 65kg super-quick, no downside. Now it took plenty of broccoli and self-discipline to get in form as Estéban. And I nonetheless couldn’t get there correctly. It was so troublesome.”

“There’s additionally a parallel between the characters and ourselves,” notes Luna. “As an actor, you’re continuously reflecting. If you find yourself 20, you realise this is perhaps the final time they ask you to play an 18-year-old. These days I’m normally forged because the dad; I’m by no means once more going to be telling tales because the son except these tales begin at a funeral. You’re all the time leaving one thing behind that you may’t return to.”

That is stated with out rancour or remorse. In reality, they each see ageing as a bringer of alternative. “Performing will get higher with age,” says Bernal. “Consider Anthony Hopkins and Kate Winslet. They had been already good however they turned higher as soon as they obtained older. You begin to have extra enjoyable and lose your youthful insecurities. You perceive it’s by no means been a contest or a race. It’s about what’s inside.”

Luna warms to the theme. “I’m able to stuff I’ve all the time needed to be able to. Not simply as an actor. I’m even a significantly better viewers member! It’s like … I’m lastly there. I’ve youngsters. I misplaced my dad. I perceive issues I didn’t get 5 or 10 years in the past. It solely turns into extra attention-grabbing.”

Their youngsters really feel somewhat in a different way. “My teenage daughter is the one reacting to me getting outdated,” Luna explains. “I placed on glasses after I learn a guide, and she or he goes, ‘What are you doing? They don’t look good on you, Dad.’ The opposite day I unplugged one thing, then went again quarter-hour later to unplug it once more.” He laughs ruefully. “She jogged my memory of that mistake for the following week.”

Bernal is nodding in recognition. “My daughter doesn’t even like me to say, ‘Good morning.’ She’s like, ‘Dad, no. Cease. Please.’ However it’s nice to give up to that. I don’t combat it. You’ll be able to’t win.”

The pair have identified one another since infancy – their mother and father, who all labored within the arts, had been mates earlier than both of them got here alongside. Bernal arrived 13 months forward of his pal. “I used to be parking the automotive,” he jokes. “Yeah, he was ensuring it was all proper for me to come back,” provides Luna.

They preserve that the primary time they met was when one-year-old Bernal was taken to go to two-day-old Luna on the maternity ward. (“I believe I ended up poking him within the face,” Bernal as soon as stated.) After they had been 9 and eight, they had been a part of a theatre firm in Mexico Metropolis that invited its youngest members to plot and carry out their very own play. “Ours was known as one thing like The Kidnapping of the Stars,” says Luna. I ask whether or not this was for family and friends and he seems to be comically affronted. “What do you imply? No, no. Actual audiences.”

Bernal raises a finger. “In reality, we went on strike.”

“We stop!” Luna says. “The director was very imply to us, so we got here out on stage after the 11am efficiency and informed everybody earlier than the 1pm present, ‘We aren’t going to carry out. This isn’t truthful.’”

“We had been being mentally exploited,” says Bernal. “After we stop, it felt courageous and empowering.”

Three weeks later, they observed the present was nonetheless operating with out them. “There have been different children saying our strains in our costumes,” says Luna. “We realised, ‘Oh shit, that’s what occurs.’ That was after we determined: subsequent time, let’s produce it ourselves.”

He’s exaggerating, however solely barely. In reality, it was a couple of years after starring in Y Tu Mamá También that they arrange their first manufacturing firm. That movie stays integral to their friendship, and in some methods, they’re all the time attempting to channel the vitality they felt on set. It’s partly what La Máquina is about: how you can retain a connection to at least one’s youthful self with out embarking on a doomed mission to recapture previous glories.

“We had been a really small crew on Y Tu Mamá También,” Bernal remembers. “When Diego and I had been carrying the digital camera containers throughout the seaside, there was a second the place we checked out one another and it was like, ‘Doing cinema is improbable, no?’ We had come extra from theatre however right here was one thing we didn’t inherit. One thing that’s ours.”

They’re each a bit of misty-eyed as we speak. “It was very particular dwelling by means of that together with your closest buddy, somebody who had been a part of your life because you had been born,” marvels Luna. “We shared the sensation that it might have been very silly to not do one thing with that.”

Mexico Metropolis remains to be dwelling to each of them, although they don’t all the time see one another as a lot they could like. “We’re speaking a few 44-year-old relationship so there isn’t any one sample,” says Luna. Bernal provides: “Life will get difficult, and the one approach to do it’s to plan forward.” The final time they obtained collectively outdoors of labor, he explains, was in June: election day in Mexico. “We had a desk, bottles of wine, some meals, a couple of different folks there. It was an incredible feeling. I really like election days. You’re feeling such as you’re within the management room.”

He turns to his buddy. “Hey, we must always go to extra elections.”

“You imply elections in each nation world wide?” says Luna.

“Yeah. Let’s do it. The election tour!”