麻豆社

Part bed-hopping sex comedy, part riotous farce, part musical comedy, The Other Side Of The Bed is more of an identity crisis than a movie. The story of two couples in search of love, this was a critical and commercial smash in Spain, where its good-looking characters' deliriously complicated infidelities obviously struck a chord with the native audience. In translation, though, it doesn't hold up quite so well, as the gags keep rolling long after laughs have fallen silent.

The formula's complicated enough: A is seeing B, who's living with C, who's in love with D, who's married to A. Or something. Forget love triangles, this is a world of rectangles, quadrangles, and hexagons in which characters hop from bed to bed as though their underpants are on fire. Javier (Ernesto Alterio) is going out with Sonia (Paz Vega) while secretly sleeping with Paula (Natalia Verbeke), the girlfriend of his best friend Pedro (Guillermo Toledo). Pedro's heartbroken about being dumped, till he finds a new friend of his own (no prizes for guessing who it is).

"OLD-FASHIONED VIEW OF MALE INFIDELITY"

As the poppy musical interludes and the brightly coloured sets suggest, there's nothing really at stake in this farcical outing in which hearts are broken and superglued back together again in the blink of an eye. It has its moments - the tennis court musical interlude; the annoying girl who talks in endless lists; the fertility play that Pedro inadvertently becomes embroiled in; and the private detective convinced that JFK shot himself - but none of them are diverting enough to detract from the film's troublingly old-fashioned view of male infidelity.

Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almod贸var knows how to mix this kind of sex comedy into something that's vibrant, frothy, and possessed of just the right amount of probing sexual subversion. Sadly, director Emilio Mart铆nez L谩zaro is no Almod贸var, which explains why this partisan missive from the frontlines of the gender war is all sex and no subversion.

In Spanish with English subtitles.