Sex, Shame and Tears

While the title's similarity to Soderbergh's hit suggests a certain derivative unoriginality (and the film does concern problems in modern marital relationships), Serrano's coarse, overly schematic farce has none of the dramatic or psychological subtlety of the American film. Rather, the loud wackiness, the insistent modishness, the pseudo-sophisticated take on sexual mores and the heavy-handed stereotypes (cynical advertising photographer, neurotic, impotent would-be writer, feisty wives) suggest a forlorn, chaotic attempt to replicate Almodóvar. The sexual politics are dubious, the world on view movie-inspired rather than realistic, the whole tiresome in the extreme.