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Spanish Fluff and Fun

      Three daughters are visiting with their divorced mother Sofia, a concert pianist. She sits them down and begins to tell them she is in love. The three excitedly begin to question her about "him." Before Sofia gets in a word, the new love shows up at the door and the daughters are shocked to find a woman entering and walking into their mother's arms. Thus begins My Mother Likes Women, a recent import from Spain. Although mainly set in Madrid, the most evocative landscapes in the film take place in Prague.
     Directed by Inés París and Daniela Fejerman, the film (starring Rosa María Sardà and Leonor Watling, both in recent Almodóvar films) concentrates on the reactions of the daughters and how they all – mother, lover, daughters, ex-husband, and several boyfriends – come together. It is mostly the story of the three daughters' reaction to learning that their mother's new love is a woman, also a musician. In fact it's mostly about Elvira, who just can't seem to get out of her own way. Her reaction, while not as negative as that of her married sister, is neurotic.
      She runs to her therapist obsessing that maybe she too is lesbian, and then she overdoes it with a new beau to prove her heterosexuality. (It's amazing how in real life too, heterosexuals are so very threatened by the mere presence of queers.) I laughed quite a bit in the first half of the film, especially when sister Sol writes a tell-all song about mom. The sisters plot to break up the loving musicians because they think that Eliska (Eliska Sirová), Mom's Czech lover, is after her money.
     Elvira befriends Eliska, and then she betrays the trust. I won't give away the whole fairly thin plot because this is a fun movie if you're not expecting anything too deep. It is Sapphic too in its emphasis on the relationship between the sisters and mother and mother's lover. The father is in the picture too, mostly as an affable and supportive presence for Elvira. In the second half it takes a somewhat more somber turn, with the necessary bit of plot twist for drama.
      This was a bit of fluff not all that lesbian but an enjoyable evening. The Sapphic cinema crowd gave it a thumbs-up, and I'd agree it's a light, fun film with a focus on women.

Peggy Luhrs is a longtime Burlington lesbian activist who runs "Sapphic Cinema" nights at the R.U.1.2? Queer Community Center.