Queens (Reinas) tells the story of a bevy of gay men who are about to be married in a group wedding to celebrate the legalization of homosexual unions in Spain. But though there is no shortage of petulant drama queen behavior from this group of stylish young men, the real queens of this movie are the mothers.
Superficially a gay-themed movie — outside of Spain, it has played mostly in gay and lesbian film festivals since it opened in 2005 — its best roles are played by Veronica Forque, Marisa Paredes, Mercedes Sampietro and Carmen Maura (the best-known of the ladies to English-speaking audiences, having featured in many of Pedro Almodovar’s films). These women are the royalty of Spanish cinema, and though none of them could be considered young, director Manuel Gomez Pereira delights in making these “women of a certain age” even more attractive than his eligible male actors.
Pereira nails his colors to the mast in a scene early on in which Marisa Paredes, who was 59 when the film was made, walks down the stairs of a luxury apartment. She’s wearing a flowing evening gown that falls low off the shoulders, and walks to the torrid strains of Michael Buble doing a cover of Peggy Lee’s Fever. Pereira’s camera lingers, caressing every line, both the curves and the wrinkles. It is utterly gratuitous, and totally lovely, managing to be both touching, funny, camp and enormously sexy. For anyone with a mother complex, or a grandmother complex for that matter, this is essential viewing.
Much else in the film is equally gratuitous and absurd, but Pereira clearly couldn’t care less. His film is a farce, with all kinds of complications as workers at the hotel where many of the wedding participants are staying go on strike, an old English sheepdog goes walkabout, infidelities are revealed, the presiding judge has a heart attack and the queens — both male and female — generally act out. Pereira manages to draw all the improbable strands together, forming a framework for his real objective, which is to charm the audience. He has a light touch, and is aided by a brisk script with lots of amusing moments and a good command of comic pacing (the story is revealed through a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards that adds a frenetic energy and complexity), but the story itself is really just a piece of fluff.
What makes Queens more than just a pastiche of stylish images and amusing jokes is the director’s very touching admiration for his leading ladies. There is Paredes, who plays a well-known actress, Veronica Forque, an aging nymphomaniac (“It is a weakness, I always have sex with the most inappropriate people.”), Carmen Maura, the owner of a hotel catering to a gay clientele, Mercedes Sampietro, the judge who will preside over the wedding, and Argentine actress Betiana Blum, who causes havoc with her sticky-beaking. Their faults range from homophobia to nymphomania, bossiness, arrogance, appalling ignorance of those supposedly closest to them, greed, selfishness and on and on. Pereira delights in every petty-minded, self-seeking moment, so that he can, at the right moment, highlight the gorgeousness within. They are awful, but we can’t help loving them to bits.
The men, with the exception of Lluis Homar who plays a gardener who has a fling with the wealthy Paredes, are nothing more than comic ciphers. That’s really all they are expected to be, and anyone looking for any exploration of gay relationships or gay marriage will not find it here.
Queens is an homage to the older woman (though fortunately there is plenty of tongue in cheek) and the young men about to be married can be seen as far more innocent than their gorgeously, gloriously scheming mothers.
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ！). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
At Computex 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) urged the government to subsidize AI. “All schools in Taiwan must integrate AI into their curricula,” he declared. A few months earlier, he said, “If I were a student today, I’d immediately start using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini Pro and Grok to learn, write and accelerate my thinking.” Huang sees the AI-bullet train leaving the station. And as one of its drivers, he’s worried about youth not getting on board — bad for their careers, and bad for his workforce. As a semiconductor supply-chain powerhouse and AI hub wannabe, Taiwan is seeing
RSS