A mi madre le gustan las mujeres (2002)

User Rating:

6.3/10   

Directors:

Daniela Féjerman
Inés París

Writers:

Daniela Féjerman (writer)
Inés París (writer)

Release Date:

11 January 2002 (Spain)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Plot:

Sofia introduces her three adult daughters to her new lover who is their age and happens to be a woman...

Plot Keywords:

Sexuality | Lesbian Mother | Gay Parent | Sister Sister Relationship | Coming Out

Awards:

9 wins & 8 nominations

Cast

Leonor Watling	...	Elvira
Rosa Maria Sardà	...	Sofía
María Pujalte	...	Gimena
Silvia Abascal	...	Sol
Eliska Sirová	...	Eliska
Chisco Amado	...	Miguel
Xabier Elorriaga	...	Carlos
Álex Angulo	...	Bernardo
Aitor Mazo	...	Ernesto
Sergio Otegui	...	Javier
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Carla Calparsoro	...	Gloria
Alberto Chaves	...	Chico Concierto
Fernando Colomo	...	Juez de paz
Lucía del Río
Gabriel Garbisu
Ana Goya	...	Carmen

Also Known As:

My Mother Likes Women (International: English title)

Runtime:

96 min | Argentina:98 min

Country:

Spain

Language:

Spanish | Czech

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Hungary:16 | South Korea:15 | Spain:13 | Switzerland:12 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:12 (canton of Vaud) | Brazil:14 | Czech Republic:12 | Argentina:13 | Australia:M

Filming Locations:

Madrid, Spain

Company:

Fernando Colomo Producciones Cinematográficas S.L.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in 2005 Glitter Awards (2005) (V)

Soundtrack:

A mi madre le gustan las mujeres

Mamma likes girls, oh oh

My Mother Likes Women (A mi madre le gustan las mujeres) is a romantic comedy lacking the genius of Almodóvar but showing his influence in the madcap passions of the mostly female principals – the mother, Sofía (Rosa Maria Sardà), a pianist; her new young Czech pianist girlfriend or novia, Eliska (Eliska Sirová); and her three daughters, who all wind up with boyfriends in the course of their unsuccessful attempt to separate Eliska from mamá. Eliska does leave mamá, on her own, and returns to Prague (whence a brief musical travelogue à la Bollywood), and she leaves, moreover, with mamá's money, but she pays it back and returns to mamá, at the daughters' own prompting, once they realize how selfish they were being.

It's all about gently shocking bourgeois sensibilities, and it ends in the happy multiple couplings of classic comedy. The opening scene is only titillating if you're amused by the daughters' variously nervous or hysterical responses to the news that the new 'love' their mother has found is a girl. We're given an instant set of 'mujeres al borde di un ataque di nervios' -- only 'women on the verge of a nervous breakdown' may not be an accurate translation of Almodóvar's title: in Spain an 'attaque de nervios' seems to be more like a hissy fit. Amusement at female discomfort is mingled with sympathy for a 'situation' that is really, in any conventional family, pretty hard to swallow. Most of the action focuses not on the happy, if temporarily separated, female couple, but on daughters Elvira (Leonor Watling), Jimena (Maria Pujailte) and Sol (Silvia Abascal), and primarily on the most neurotic of the three, Elivira.

After several false starts due to self-sabotage, Elvira lands an appealingly slim and famous writer of fat novels. Sol, the rock singer daughter, who performs an embarrassing song exposing her mother's proclivities, lands Eliska's brother. The third, married daughter, Jimena, gets divorced from her unsympathetic husband and hooks up with a garden entrepreneur whose company name is 'Plántate,' a moniker that means 'plant yourself,' which I guess they all do, on the screen anyway. Jimena and Señor Plántate meet by the crude, but handy, method of their vehicles colliding in a Madrid street.

It would be tempting to say this whole movie is a car crash. But that would be unfair: however these two lady directors' cinematic efforts must suffer by comparison with the increasingly brilliant and surreally beautiful creations of Pedro Almodóvar, its tumultuous plot only occasionally falters. Ines París and Daniela Fejerman know something about neurotic women, and My Mother Likes Women entertains so long as you can keep up an interest in its largely contrived series of episodes. It has a pleasing cast, a sense of motion, and the bonus of some nice, not too schmaltzy classical piano music. But despite the hip premise of late-blooming maternal lesbianism, it's really utterly conventional and barely skin deep.