Humanity, by definition, has an incredibly short memory. It’s not completely our fault; history is hard to focus on and also by definition, gets longer as time goes on. We just don’t live long enough, and by the time we’re old and wise and actually have some sure-footed advice that might help others, we 1) don’t get listened to because we’re old, and 2) die. Our pictures might sit on someone’s Day of the Dead altar for two, maybe three generations. But after that, unless you’re super famous or super infamous, you’ll be completely forgotten.
I don’t say this to depress you, but as an introduction for the movie topic of the day. “Nuestros Tiempos” (Our Times), a Mexican movie currently on Netflix. It’s a film that reminds us of the extent to which how we live, and even how we love, is shaped by the circumstances of time and place.
It’s also a reminder of how quickly things can change. It boggles my mind to remember that when my mother came of age, she couldn’t get a credit card (in the U.S.!) without a male relative co-signer. She grew up in a time when pants were not permitted as part of the dress code for girls, and she couldn’t take birth control pills. She certainly couldn’t count on being taken seriously at work.
Hell, the little girl who first stepped into a newly integrated school, Ruby Bridges, is still alive and not even that old! It happened before I was born and in my mind is ancient history. See? Nothing truly “exists” for us if we weren’t alive when it did.
Movie: Nuestros Tiempos (Our Time)
This movie, honestly, did not do super well with critics. It was a little Polyanna-ish, I’ll admit, with all nothing-but-earnest characters who were just a little too perfect and gracious. But I still thought it was sweet. It made for both a good story and a sort of “look how far we’ve come” reflection around women’s rights.
The story centers around a married couple, two physicists who are deeply in love. In 1966, they both work at the UNAM (Universidad Autónoma de Mexico) in Mexico City. Their main project is a time travel machine that the physics department has sunk a lot of money into.
While they both teach, the wife is allowed to more as a favor than anything, and has trouble getting her higher-ups to listen to her — they openly prefer to deal with her husband. When their boss comes to dinner, it’s she who prepares a homemade meal and answers the door while her husband relaxes with a cigarette and a newspaper.
As you can likely guess, they get their time machine working one night and are thrust nearly 60 years into the future. Lucky for them, the leader of the current UNAM is a former student who’d fan-girled all over la doctora in the past, and she helps them settle and continue their work on the time machine.
The crux of the movie is that, without the overly patriarchal system of the past to boost him, the husband finds himself taking a backseat to his wife’s popularity and brilliance. Given his advantages in the past, it’s not a place he’s accustomed to occupying. The husband is never painted as bad or a bigot — just a product of his time.
Some of the moments of them discovering the future together are adorable. The first stop outside of the time machine is at an OXXO. They assume the cashier is deaf because she’s wearing earbuds and not responding to them. The cashier assumes their staring means they’re trying to pick out flavored condoms from a display behind her. “How could I ask for condoms with two ladies present?” the husband responds. Their fascination with the modern smartphone and how it works is also endless.
Others are a bit more heart-wrenching. When the wife returns with goodies from a sex shop, the husband is impressed with the lingerie, but shocked at a “retardant” for him. “How could you have shared things about our intimate life with someone else?”
Later, when the wife is nominated to give a special talk on an International Women’s Day event, the loss of status proves to be too much for her husband. In one of the most cringey moments of the film, he pops up and goes to the podium when her name is called. He recites an extremely cringy poem that would have elicited warm nods and smiles in “his time.” In 2025, though, he doesn’t seem to notice the uncomfortable shifting and staring among the audience.
Soon after this experience, he decides he wants to return to 1966. He wants his wife to go back with him, but — you guessed it — she likes actually being able to do her work and be respected for it.
To me, the real magic of this movie is in answering this question: does love hang around when power dynamics shift? And it’s not as if his wife is now more powerful than him; she simply stands, suddenly, on equal footing.
In “his time,” the husband is an exceedingly kind and encouraging person. In modern times, he feels the frustration that his wife did. The difference is that she’d known no other life, whereas he felt the punch of sudden loss of power and respect all at once.
It’s easy to be gracious when you’re consistently in a position to show grace with no risk to your status. When the world around you has changed but you haven’t things get stickier.
I won’t give away the ending. Don’t expect fantastic acting, but it’s worth a watch, and an especially interesting to compare the different sensibilities of the times in Mexico.
I wasn’t there, of course. But I see how women who came of age in that time period behave today, and that tells me more than anything how different things are now.
For my older readers out there, I’d love to hear from you — what changes have you noticed over your lifetime when it comes to gendered behavior?
Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sarahedevries.substack.com.
