Looking for a perfect antidote for a cold (ish) Thanksgiving day before the madness kicks I opted to re-visit this delightfully silly farce from 2005, which starred not one but five of Spain’s actress divas. Not one of whom is on the right side of 50 (or 60 even!) but are all them are vamping it up like sex sirens with skimpy clingy indecently low-cut frocks and lethally high heels heels even though they are all meant to be playing mothers at their sons weddings. I guess the fact that all the sons are gay does give them a little licence to make sure that they are not lost in the crowd.
The occasion is the first legal same-sex marriages in Madrid and 20 couples are going to tie the knot in a joint ceremony at a rather fabulous new hotel in a blaze of publicity. It may be the men who are getting married, but it’s their mothers who are having all the sex, and mainly with wildly inappropriate men. Magda the hotelier is facing a strike from all the kitchen staff, but is still making out with the head chef on the down low; Reyes a wealthy actress beds her long time gardener (who’s son is marrying is her son!); but that pales into insignificance with Nuria a pathological nymphomaniac who sleeps with her future son in law.
Writer/director Manuel Gomez Pereira is obviously a big fan of Pedro Almodovar and he has used three of his most fabulous stars : Carmen Maura, Marisa Paredis & Veronica Forque. But as sweet and funny as this is, it sadly lacks Almodovar’s deft hand at creating the side-splitting farce that it could/should have been.
That said its a silly frothy story, the men are hot, the (straight) sex is not, and the mothers are as camp as a row of tents. So really a perfect choice for the occasion.