re:mote voices

Title: The Other Side Of The Bed [El Otro Lado De La Cama]
Cast: Ernesto Alterio, Paz Vega, Guillermo Toledo, Natalia Verbeke
Director: Emilio Martínez Lázaro

The Other Side Of The Bed reportedly did well in it’s native Spain, a comedy musical, which is pretty good if you take it as being fun. Plot wise it is fairly straight forward – there are two couples, with one splitting up at the start of the film, and revealing shortly after that the guy from the other couple has been seeing the one that split up – but he keeps finding excuses not to tell his girlfriend. Setting up a farce situation, where he is nearly found out by his girlfriend, or his best friend who he has betrayed, while the other girl gets increasingly annoyed. At key moments the cast will suddenly burst into song, and given that this is a film where the lyrics are being translated into another language for the subtitles, they hold up quite well. While the two lead men may get higher billing here, they are unknown to me, and in fact it is the two lead actresses who are known and of appeal to myself. Paz Vega took the lead in what was probably Julio Medem’s most successful film to date – Sex And Lucia – a memorably sexy and emotionally intense feature. While Natalia Verbeke was the love interest in the indy American comedy Jump Tomorrow, an Argentinean born actress, now cropping up in major Spanish cinema. While Sex And Lucia and Jump Tomorrow are probably both better films than The Other Side Of The Bed, the two actresses are on form and the results are amusing and entertaining.