In the Spanish comedy A mi madre le gustan las mujeres (My Mother Likes Women) from writer-directors Daniela Féjerman and Inés París, Sophia (Rosa María Sardà) has decided that the end of her birthday party might be the right moment to tell her three grown-up daughters something she has been keeping from them for a while: she is in love, though that in itself is not the problem. It is the fact she is in love with a Czech pianist half her age and of the same sex! Shock! Horror! Her three daughters are introduced to her mother’s new lover Eliska (Eliska Sirová) with two kisses on the cheek and a cold stare. They do not know what to say to her, and she does not know what to say to them, since she has problems speaking Spanish. When the three of them are alone, one of them exclaims: “I have nothing against gay people, but not my mother at her age!”

Of the three daughters, the eldest, Gimena (María Pujalte), is trying to survive her marriage by focusing on her little boy rather than her husband, and the youngest, Sol (Silvia Abascal), isa rock singer who deals with her teenage angst in her lyrics. The film's focus, however, lies mostly with the middle child, Elvira. She is portrayed by Leonor Watling, who spent most of Almodóvar’s Hable con ella (Talk to Her) in a coma but here is a sparkling, bubbling, sizzling sort of girl, who seems to feel the need to overcompensate for her character by going into the auto-destruction mode every now and again. She is seeing a seedy psychiatrist who advises her odd things, and tries to keep afloat in her job at a publishing house that is closer to bankruptcy than Elvira is to a nervous breakdown.

The three girls have decided on an action-plan to get rid of Eliska after discovering that their mother has invested all her money in Eliska’s career.Surely, they reckon, this cannot be an act of love, but only the result of manipulation on Eliska’s part. But how to drive a wedge between two people who love each other? Make one of them love someone else, of course. The three evil sisters, like something out of Macbeth, concoct the following plan: they will find another lesbian girl who should get it on with Eliska. Easier said than done, however, because where does one find an available accomplice willing to play their wicked game?

Soon they realise their little plan will not work and the following solution is found: one of the three girls should seduce the pianist. Elvira freaks out, because she thinks she might actually enjoy it and runs off to her psychiatrist, who proposes a dubious way of clearing any sexual ambiguity Elvira might harbour.

Go and see for yourself how things end, as this film is really worth your time. Even though it is clearly riding on the wave of a "sexually liberated" Spain as portrayed frequently by Almodóvar, this film, directed and written by two women, clearly steers its own course. The humour is very light, sometimes verging on the neurotic sort of humour of the Woody Allen variery, and love in A mi madre le gustan las mujeres is not about sweating bodies humping away in the dark of night, but more about genuine care and affection in broad daylight.

It is light comedy that is executed very well, with Watling in a luminous performance that takes A mi madre le gustan las mujeres to the next level. This is a Spanish treat that is not so much about the acceptance of a lesbian relationship in the family as it is a broad comedy about a neurotic twenty-something trying to make sense of it all.

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