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Los 2 Lados de la Cama (The Two Sides of The Bed)



cast :

Ernesto Alterio, Guillermo Toledo, Alberto San Juan, Pilar Castro, Lucia Jimanez

crew :

Directed by: Emilio Martinez-Lazaro
Written by: David
Produced by: Tomas Cimadevilla
DOP: Juan Molina
Editor: Fernando Pardo
Music Score by: Roque Banos

release date :

2005

Almost any film coming out of Spain (or arguably any other country) that deals with transgressive sexuality in a comical way will invite comparisons with that country’s most famous directing talent, Pedro Almodovar: ‘The Two Sides of the Bed’ (2005) is one such film. It’s not that Spain lacks any competition in the directing stakes, but rather that Almodovar’s consistency and international success has meant that if audiences outside of the country only see one Spanish film a year, it will probably be one of his. The fall of Franco’s Fascist rule in 1975 hailed a new era of music, art, drug-taking, and wild sexual experimentation- it was as if Spain enjoyed its 60’s Summer of Love and the Punk explosion all at the same time, and Almodovar, who at the time not only directed short films but fronted a cross-dressing rock band and penned erotic fiction, was the new movements figurehead. However, the huge success of ‘Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’ in 1988 brought Pedro a new worldwide respectability and ever since then he has produced a film every two years at the least, each of them increasing in aesthetic and narrative maturity whilst still retaining his exploration and fascination with transgressive sexuality and strong female characters. Perhaps a cynical person would see a film like ‘The Two Sides of the Bed’ to be cashing in on this market somewhat. It is in fact a sequel to a huge- grossing hit of 2002 called ‘The Other Side of The Bed’ which explored similarly sexual themes in a light comic way. Both films were huge domestic hits and tentatively crossed over into the European art-house market. It’s not hard to see why they may have mass appeal in and outside their own country- the film is light, airy, and funny, and draws upon many classical audiences pleasing film tropes that it affectionately subverts through its subject matter. However, I found the film to be essentially rather shallow, and while its subject matter may very well be subversive and modern, the film as a whole is rendered ineffectual by its visual and narrative conservatism.


‘The Two Sides of the Bed’ tells the story of two couples who are also best friends, on the surface a happy and wholesome foursome. However, the opening scene in which the four are drinking in a wine bar reveals that the two female characters, Marta (Veronica Sanchez) and Racquel (Lucia Jimenez) are having a passionate lesbian affair right under the noses of their respective boyfriends, Javier (Ernesto Alterio) and Pedro (Guillermo Toledo). Marta and Javier are in fact due to be married as the film opens, but Racquel persuades Marta to call it off and continue their affair in public. Meanwhile Carlota (Pilar Castro) a random drunk woman at the bar who appears in this opening scene, witnesses Racquel and Marta’s lesbian romp in the club toilets before joining Pedro and Javier on their stag night. Therefore, Carlota becomes embroiled in their messy lives, eventually forming something of a ménage with Pedro and Javier in the absence of their ‘real’ girlfriends who have committed the ultimate emasculating sin in their eyes- rejecting them and manhood altogether to form a happy sexual relationship without men. By contrast Carlota is resoundingly straight yet flirtatious and sexually available. Meanwhile another couple, Rafa (Alberto San Juan) and Pilar (Maria Esteve) are introduced as the guy’s friends, but their relationship too crumbles as Pilar starts to fall for Rafa’s best friend Carlos (Secun de la Rosa). If all this sounds confusing then don’t worry, it is meant to be. The plot moves at a breakneck speed with barely anytime to reflect, and there is so much bed-hopping and so many twists and turns that it quickly becomes tiresome rather than intriguing. The film exhausts almost every post-Almodovar cliché regarding sexuality until pretty much every character has slept with or made a pass at one another, man or woman, straight or gay. If the film had stuck to its initial premise of examining the fallout of the broken relationship between two best friends whose girlfriends leave them for each other, or perhaps explored in more detail the girls’ journey after they left them it may have made for a more engaging film. Instead, different narrative threads are toyed with and then rejected in favour of something that the director may have decided will be more shocking to an audience. This means that nothing is explored in any real depth. Likewise, apart from Javier and Pedro, we never really get close to the characters and so never understand or care too much about their motivations. The two leads are given the most screen time and the lengthiest stretches of dialogue but sadly, for a film that initially displays such an empowering act of female solidarity, the female characters are underused. Apart from one touching scene in which, after making love, Marta realises that Racquel may still have feelings for Pedro, their lesbian affair is more often than not treated as a farcical joke rather than an actually feasible way of life or workable alternative to straight couple-dom. For a film that makes a gleeful mockery of the unobservant and self-involved world of the modern male, it is clearly on their side. Meanwhile Carlota, the drunk they meet at the bar, is clearly a character written to please men. She is flirty, available, and very loving towards both the men, in an emotional and physical way. Again though, she exists merely as a fantasy figure to bring the two male friends closer together- following the physical sexual culmination of her ménage friendship with Pedro and Javier, she exits the film as easily and with as little fanfare as she entered it. Rafa meanwhile is the films comic foil, the joke being that he can’t seem to see that his best friend is having an affair with his girlfriend right under his nose. Once he realises what is actually going on, he descends into a comically portrayed mood of madness and jealousy. Although the kidnapping plot that arises from his mental fallout doesn’t really add anything to the overall film, it is at least an absurdly comical diversion. However the characters on the whole are sketchy at best: they inhabit a seemingly middleclass lifestyle of large luxurious city apartments and expensive meals, although it is never confirmed what the main characters do for a living, apart from Pedro who briefly mentions that he is an archaeologist near the beginning of the film, and Rafa who, in perhaps a nod to his status as an on outsider in the close-knit twosome of Javier and Pedro, is a much more working class taxi driver.


One major stylistic element of the film which I haven’t mentioned yet is its borrowing from the structure of the Classical Hollywood musical, with song and dance numbers that reflect the narrative goings-on and the characters’ thoughts regularly punctuating the diegetic realism of the classical plot structure. This may seem like a rather large oversight on my part but it’s intentional, as the songs themselves don’t really add anything at all to the film as a whole and are rather forgettable. Granted, the songs in musicals rarely ever move the plot forward and are used instead to punctuate something that has gone before or to reveal the depth of a characters’ emotion away from the realism of narrative- the effect, however if done properly, it is almost surreal. Here however the musical numbers, being a polished mixture of traditional Spanish music and modern pop, are as light and inconsequential as the characters and their actions, and so they only serve to temporarily slow down what is admittedly a fast-moving plot. The only point in which the musical element really works is during a scene halfway through the film in which Javier and Pedro have reluctantly agreed to attend a dance class with Carlota. Somehow Marta and Racquel track the boys down and the whole class erupts into a modern song and dance number that, given the circumstances and the fact that all of the key characters are confronting each other for the first time, actually has some emotional relevance and some direct relation to the plot. Elsewhere however, the songs are just fluffy padding. One other classical American genre that the film draws upon but successfully emulates is the screwball comedies of the thirties and forties, such as ‘Bringing Up Baby’ (1938). The light comic touch and complex interplay of these types of film, actually seems more suited to the freewheeling sexuality of a post-Franco Spain than it ever did to a deeply conservative USA of the pre-sixties. Once again though Almodovar has beaten them to the fore as he was much more successfully mining the American screwball tradition as early as the mid-eighties in films such as the previously mentioned ‘Woman on The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’ and ‘Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down’ (1990). The general mise-en-scene of a modern Spain populated by lush apartments and wine bars decked out in bright primary colours also recalls Almodovar’s work, although here the affect is a heightened sense of realism rather than the more popular directors’ mastery of pop-art garishness.


Most of the film’s faults could perhaps be put down to the experience of the director, Emilio Martinez-Lazaro. He actually made his first feature in 1971, way before Almodovar had even put the preliminary plans together for his first film, ‘Pepi, Luci, Bom’ (eventually released properly in 1980), but in 1974 Martinez-Lazaro entered the TV industry and has only sporadically directed films since. This may be his downfall. Film directors who work in the smaller-screen and faster-plot driven world of cinema often produce work that seems light and un-cinematic, charges that could easily be applied to ‘The Two Sides of The Bed’. It has a sit-com-like lightness that fails to ever really engage beyond vague amusement and in failing to make the most of the potential richness and depth of the cinematic medium, comes across instead as a particularly racy extended episode of Friends, or like ‘Love Actually’ (2003) with lesbian tendencies.


Watch


Country: Spain
Budget: £
Length: 104mins


Filmography:
‘Love Actually’, 2003, Richard Curtis, Universal Pictures
‘Pepi, Luci, Bom’, 1980, Pedro Almodóvar, Fígaro Films
‘Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down’, 1990, Pedro Almodóvar, El Deseo S.A.,
‘Bringing Up Baby’, 1938, Howard Hawks, RKO Radio Pictures
‘The Other Side of The Bed’, Emilio Martínez Lázaro, Impala
'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’, 1988, Pedro Almodóvar, El Deseo S.A.


Pub/2008


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