Have we got a pair of slumdog millionaires for you! In Rudo y Cursi, Y tu mamá también co-stars Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal reunite as two hardscrabble soccer fans whisked from the drudgery of small-town banana picking for a shot at the big time. Directed by Alfonso Cuarón’s kid brother Carlos Cuarón, the movie shares many of the charms of that earlier collaboration (Carlos co-wrote Y tu mamá, as well as Alfonso’s Sólo con tu pareja) but suggests a very different dynamic between the two characters.

This time, Luna and Bernal play half-brothers, named Beto and Tato, mutually loyal to their common mother and, to a lesser degree, one another. When they aren’t toiling away in the fields, they spend most of their time on the soccer field. Beto plays goalie, aggressive enough in his manner that his teammates call him “Rudo” (or “rough”), while Tato is such a show-offy forward, his fancy tricks earn him the nickname “Cursi” (“prissy,” in English) — monikers that confuse the fact that each is simultaneously macho and sensitive.

They’re both dreamers, but unrealistic enough about how to pursue their dreams that they hardly know how to handle opportunity when they bump into a talent scout on their way to a match. Instead of talking soccer, Tato tries to impress the out-of-towner with his less-than-impressive singing skills. A compulsive gambler, Beto sees this as his big chance, overlooking the fact that his wife and kids don’t necessarily fit into his fantasy of fame. Fortunately for them, the scout admires both brothers’ skill, but there is a catch: He can only take one to Mexico City to play — and so the rivalry begins.

Actually, Carlos Cuarón makes it clear that a form of healthy competition has always existed between the siblings, as suggested by the art form to which the pair have raised insults and squabbling. In selling their unique connection, it helps that Luna and Bernal have a preexisting bond, though it’s that same keen observation of human nature and keen attention to character that the writer brought to Y tu mamá también that makes their fraternal dynamic so convincing.

As he proved in that earlier project, Carlos Cuarón has a beautiful gift for boiling a vivid and complex world down to the life experience of a couple characters. Rudo y Cursi may not aspire to the sheer existential heft of Y tu mamá, but it manages to offer a near-epic sense of Mexican culture and society by making intimate company with two compelling characters. As soon as he signs with a pro team, the lucky brother is successful enough that the scout returns to recruit the other, and before long, they’re playing against one another while living together in the same mansion. Money comes easy (a dangerous temptation for Beto’s gambling habit), as do women (Tato falls head-first for a social-climbing television star), and it’s impossible to resist the infectious energy of their success.

At this point, an American movie would do one of two things: The momentum would build to a climactic game, in which these underdogs manage to overcome the odds once and for all, or the cautionary tale would kick in and the movie would remind us that nothing in life is that easy. But Rudo y Cursi owes nothing to Hollywood storytelling, adhering instead to a wildly manic below-the-border sensibility in which fate doesn’t follow Syd Field rules and chance can be truly unpredictable.

Like a Gabriel García Márquez novel, Rudo y Cursi sports a sense of humor about life’s humiliations (using the jaded talent scout as his narrator, Cuarón expects us to laugh off such incidents as Tato’s hazing, when his teammates cheerily gang-rape him in the shower) and a generosity toward the “undeserving” (banana pickers and drug dealers alike deserve a shot in his nonjudgmental worldview).  And just as Y tu mamá también refused to sentimentalize sexuality, this story shows that life may can deliver unimaginable satisfaction and disappointment within the span of a few minutes. As the debut release for Mexican super-threesome Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro’s new Cha Cha Chá shingle, Rudo y Cursi marks a great first project: Its nationality is stamped in its very DNA, and yet the film’s appeal is truly universal.