Queens – Reinas (2005)

Directed by: Manuel Gómez Pereira | 107 minutes | comedy, romance | Actors: Verónica Forqué, Carmen Maura, Marisa Paredes, Mercedes Sampietro, Betiana Blum, Gustavo Salmerón, Unax Ugalde, Hugo Silva, Daniel Hendler, Paco León, Raúl Jiménez, Ginés García Millán, Jorge Perugorría, Lluís Homar, Fernando Valverde

A film about homosexuality, in which the homosexual himself is not central, but his mother: that is ‘Queens’. Five very different mothers are followed in the period just before their son’s wedding. This marriage is a mass same-sex marriage, with twenty couples getting married at once. All five mothers have different problems surrounding their son’s marriage. For example, there is Nuria (Verónica Forque) who at impossible moments wants to go to bed with impossible men and thus ends up in bed with her soon-to-be son-in-law. Magda (Carmen Maura) is the owner of the hotel where the wedding will take place and she has major problems with her staff, who are going to go on strike this very week. Then there’s the movie star Reyes (Marisa Paredes) who can’t bear the fact that her son is going to marry her gardener’s son. Finally, we have Judge Helena (Mercedes Sampietro) who does not want to marry her actual son and Ofelia (Betiana Blum) who comes from Buenos Aires especially for her son’s wedding.

With ‘Queens’ Manuel Gómez Pereira has made a light-hearted romantic comedy about a subject that is still somewhat taboo even in Europe: your son who wants to marry a man. Somehow, there is no mother who automatically accepts that her son is gay, but it has to be Ofelia, who comes from Buenos Aires with all her wealth and thus turns her son’s life upside down. . It is clear that love eventually triumphs and that is not what this film is about. Queens, on the other hand, is much more about the acceptance of same-sex marriage. In the Netherlands, however, such a film would not be made quickly, because we are still just a bit more progressive than Spain, where same-sex marriage had just been introduced when this film was made.

The storylines intertwined in various ways – with mass same-sex marriage being the main connection – is a nice find. It’s just a shame that the stories that work towards a rousing finale end in an anticlimax. The fact that the wedding is such an anticlimax is mainly because the different storylines don’t have enough depth. The problems that arise before the marriage are solved in a very simple way. The interplay of the five ladies, whom the producer of the film calls ‘the muses of Almodóvar’, makes ‘Queens’ an entertaining film despite this shortcoming. It’s not a masterpiece, but the film is definitely worth seeing.