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Long before Alfonso Cuaron became the Oscar-nominated — and eventually Oscar-winning — filmmaker behind films like Gravity and the about-to-premiere-on-Netflix Roma, he was a 29-year-old aspiring director whose first feature film was a horny sex comedy written by his own brother. Solo Con Tu Pareja (English translation: “Only With Your Partner,” though the American title of the film was actually Love in the Time of Hysteria) is the 1991 romantic farce that Cuaron made before departing for American success directing films like A Little Princess and Great Expectations. And if those two movies were your first experiences with Cuaron, this positively horny piece of broad comedy is bound to really blow your mind. Most people — even avowed Cuaron fans — don’t even know that this movie exists, which is why it makes for an irresistible curiosity streaming for free to Amazon Prime subscribers.

Of course, if your familiarity began with 2002’s horny teenage road trip Y Tu Mama Tambien, the existence of Solo Con Tu Pareja puts Cuaron’s career in a much more symmetrical context. Suddenly, Y Tu Mama looks like a homecoming after semester abroad in Hollywood. Y Tu Mama even begins with a scene of a straight couple having energetic if haphazard sex on an askew mattress exactly like the opening scene of Con Tu Pareja. Still, Y Tu Mama is a clear and confident step forward, as it should be coming over a decade since Cuaron’s debut. Ironically, even though Y Tu Mama is the film about teenagers (Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, in fact), it’s Solo Con Tu Pareja that comes across as immature. The central story is one of those plots that would never in a million years fly today: a womanizer is tricked into thinking he’s HIV positive, and in his suicidal aftermath (played for big laughs as he sticks his head repeatedly into a microwave oven), he meets another woman. It’s a lot to get past; a lot of treating AIDS like an abstract, almost cartoonish worst-case-scenario instead of something anyone worth caring about would ever actually get. And the rom-com farce of it all isn’t quite rewarding enough to counteract that.

Still, there are flashes of the kind of filmmaker Cuaron would become. The comedic set pieces have great energy to them, and the characters are given enough moments of sincerity to allow the audience to get a foothold into actually caring what happens to it. The epic single take shots and clever subtext would come later. But a lot of what works in Y Tu Mama Tambien also works here: a palpable horniness adorning what becomes a window into a real character or two.

Stream Solo Con Tu Pareja (Love in the Time of Hysteria) on Prime Video