A mia madre piacciono le donne

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.

"My Mother Likes Women" is a subtitled Spanish comedy about what happens when a divorced middle aged Madrid mother introduces her three adult daughters to her new lover...a woman. Bemused at the mother's lesbian leanings the three daughters set about to cope with the situation which, of course, leads to a variety of contrived comic moments. Breezy, fun, bright, and well directed, this film is a showcase for Lenor Watling's worthy characterization of the middle daughter; the centerpiece of the film. "My Mother Likes Women" should appeal most to Watling fans, lesbians, females in general, and aficionados of Spanish cinema. Subtitle translations are below par. No nudity and should qualify for about a PG-13 rating for mature theme elements. (B)

"My Mother Likes Women" is the story of a divorced Madrid concert pianist, Sofia (Rosa Maria Sarda), who stuns her three daughters with the announcement that she has a female live-in lover, a pianist twenty or more years her junior, Eliska (Eliska Sirova). Eliska is a talented Czech studying with Sofia. The two are clearly in love.

Sofia's daughters, alternating between trying to accept mom's relationship and being aghast at her taking up with a young woman - or ANY woman - are a handful. The oldest, Gimena (Maria Pujalte), is in a deteriorating marriage which she stays in for the sake of her young son. The youngest, Sol (Sylvia Abascal), is a sharp-tongued rock singer with multi-hued long hair. Most interesting - and really the center of directors Daniela Fejerman and Ines Paris's comedy/drama - is the middle daughter, Elvira, played with extraordinary range and zest by Leonor Watling.

The daughters concoct a harebrained scheme to break up their mother's relationship and send Eliska packing. The plan has only two serious flaws: conception and execution. The intended resolution falls prey to pratfalls and comedic miscalculations. At least for a while.

There really are two stories here, Sofia and her lover and the trio's interaction with them and the saga of screwball Elvira, an employee at a publishing house, who always manages to mess up and ruin any promising relationship. Deep in therapy with a somewhat seedy psychologist, she's trying to figure out why all her self-fulfilling prophecies of doom invariably come to dreadful fruition.

Complicating her life is her growing attraction to established (and very handsome) author Miguel (Chisco Amado) who's both drawn to the very beautiful Elvira and sent running off scared by her flighty, immature behavior.

Leonor Watling is terrific as a neurotic in full bloom. Her insight into her very counter-productive behavior grows believably as the story unfolds. Watling has that special ability to telegraph her emotions in effective and often captivating split-second shots - she reminds me very much of the better known French actress Audrey Tautou.

All the cast members are excellent but Watling steals this film.

There are some nice scenes of Prague and piano pieces by Bach, Schubert and Beethoven add to the aural attractiveness of the film.

Almodovar would have made these women more introspective and, surely, both bitingly cynical and more neurotic. Painfully neurotic. These women are too nice for the typical Almodovar flick. "My Mother Likes Women" presents complex characters in an appealing, not overly analyzed light.

Simply very enjoyable.

8/10

This movie was really not that bad. I saw this movie as part of my class for Spanish writing, and I was pleasantly surprised. Unless you're studying Spanish, you'd probably prefer this movie in subtitles, but that's okay. Even though a few things that were said in this movie that were funny flew over my head at times, whether it be that Spanish humor is different than American humor or that I just didn't keep track of all that was said, it was still rather funny.

The basic plot of the movie centers around a woman who is the middle child in a family consisting of a mother, a father, and three daughters, of which she is the middle daughter. The mother and father are divorced, and, as the literal translation of the title implies, the mother became a lesbian and began to live with a woman who is around the age of the woman that the plot centers around. The movie is basically about how this main woman, the middle child, copes with this change in her life, both on a family level and on her relationships with men.

In the aspect about this working-class woman questioning her sexuality, this movie is quite a bit like the recent "Kissing Jessica Stein". The family aspect of the movie is a lot like "Soul Food", although the mother in "Soul Food" wasn't a lesbian. Either way, this movie wasn't a rip-off of either of these movies. The movie was altogether very original, and it had a theme which was very universal. I think that any American that sees this movie will relate to it in some way. It does take place in modern-day Spain, but could easily take place in America or Great Britain, or anywhere else within reason.

There is one other thing. The funniest part of this movie is when the youngest daughter, who is in a rock band, sings a song about her mother being a lesbian. The reaction of her family in the audience is classic. I give this movie a 9/10.

Easy and good film, it's about love, not simply lesbian love: family love, male-female love, girl-girl love ... and sex? not at all (amusing film anyway). A well constructed comedy with a funny and beautiful Leonor Watling, great performance, without her the film will be less interesting, and the story is as I have said funny, see it and enjoy it.