De Que Se Rien Las Mujeres (What Makes Women Laugh?)

Description

In the tradition of Pedro Almodovar comes this outrageous romantic comedy directed by award-winning screenwriter/director Joaquin Oristrell (Between Your Legs, Mouth to Mouth). Three sisters turn the sex roles upside down when Luci (Veronica Forque, star of Almodovar's Kika) finds her recently departed husband's bulging little black book and is shocked to learn the extent of his philandering. Ignoring her late husband's pleas from the world beyond, she and her sisters, Graci and Mari, decide what's good for the goose... Together on vacation, they treat themselves to a little tit for tat with some local boy toys and have the time of their lives!

Customer Reviews:

"You've been trying to grope me since the salad.".......2005-03-02

"De Que Se Rien Las Mujeres" ("What makes Women Laugh?") is a Spanish comedy starring Veronica Forque as Luci. Luci and her two half sisters, Graci (Candela Pena) and Mari (Adriana Ozores) have a stage act called "The 3 Graces." Luci is married to successful comedy writer, Carlos (Jordi Bosch), but when he's killed, Luci discovers that he's been habitually unfaithful. When Carlos returns as a ghost, Luci goes on tour with her sisters to Benidorm. Here, she decides, she will get even by taking lovers.

Spanish comedienne Veronica Forque has a lively effervescent personality. She is always fun to watch, and she brings life and joy to the film. There are some scenes when she just casts a look, and as a Veronica Forque fan, it's enough to make me laugh out loud. The three half sisters are all completely different types, and part of the film focuses on their relationships both on and off the stage. In typical Spanish style, there are always complications in relationships. One sister is having an affair with a married man whose wife is having an affair with his best friend. Adding to the family drama is Luci's dapper octogenarian father. He's just embarked on his fourth marriage to an ambitious twenty year old who wants to elbow her way into the sister act. While Luci's misadventures with men are funny, the film is uneven at times. The inclusion of the ghost in the film is problematic--good for laughs as Luci tries to assault him, but the joke gets a bit old as the film wears on. This good-natured film, however, also makes some subtle stabs at the difference in standards towards fidelity for men and women, and the sisters challenge the macho notions of the marketability and shelf life of women. The film is in Spanish with English subtitles--displacedhuman

A Campy Hoot of a Risque Film from Joaquin Oristrell.......2005-02-18

What makes women laugh? Apparently their own foibles and ability to find humor in their contrasting roles as housewives versus competitive predators - at least according to writer director Joaquin Oristrell. This colorful, musical, rowdy, naughty little film is so over the top that it is a delight. In order to get into the mindset for this film the viewer must just relax and let the games begin.

Three sisters have been successfully performing as a trio of entertainers who berate men in Spain's dinner clubs in their outrageous outfits. When one of the sister's husbands is accidentally killed, she goes into a funk and is unable to perform, until she discovers her late husband (who just happens to appear to her as a 'ghost') had a secret life of a lothario. This new information tips the scale of the mourning widow and in defiance she is off with her sisters (likewise disillusioned in men as husbands) to not only perform on the stage but in the raunchy bars and beds.

Each of the sisters has random encounters and each finds a coupling in the end, a new version of what women, freed from societal expectations, can enjoy as much as philandering men!

If the story is pushed over the edge of taste into the bawdy burlesque arena, then it seems that this is the drive of the director. Surrealism as always belonged to Spain. The actors are all fine (nice to see Jorge Sanz just being a silly parody of himself) and the 'staging' is wonderfully corny. This is a bit of fluff in the best sense of the word. Grady Harp, February 2005

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