Spanish Cinema - Los Dos Lados de la Cama

About four years ago I went to the cinema in Barcelona, where I had just started living. The film I chose to see, El Otro Lado dela Cama (‘the other side of the bed’) was breaking all sorts of box office records. I didn’t know much - apart from the films I’d seen by Pedro Almodovar and Bigas Luna - about Spanish cinema. I thought I’d use this movie as a litmus test to see what state their industry was in. It was a sexual farce, set in Madrid, following the fortunes of a group of friends who found it difficult not to hop into one another’s beds. Every now and again they burst into song. It was shallow, irritating, and deeply unfunny. Or was I missing something?

I dedicated some time to finding out more about Spanish cinema. I watched some fine old movies by the likes of Carlos Saura and Luis Garcia Berlanga, and some passable new ones by Julio Menem and Alejandro Almenabar. And I realised that the Spanish film-making had been hamstrung by the restrictions imposed on it by the Franco era, and was still in the early stages of recovering from the no-hold-barred euphoria that followed its release from those restrictions. That exciting times were ahead, which was just as well, because there weren’t many left behind. Los Dos Lados de la Cama is a sequel to the film I saw in Barcelona. It is a sexual farce, about bed-hopping Madrileños who occasionally burst into song. It is meant to be darker and more intelligent than its predecessor. I wonder… AL