I don't know if someone out there was praying for a Spanish musical version of Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice, but now we have it in Emilio Martínez Lázaro's The Other Side of the Bed.  Six Goya nominations later, the film is set to debut in the US as the first film in the brand-spanking-new Sundance Film Series.

I'll be honest – it takes something pretty special to make me get into a musical, whether it's kick-ass music (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) or a campy murder-mystery (8 Women).  Bed's selling point, at least for me, is seeing the two hottest women in all of Spain get naked and have a lot of sex.  Not with each other, though, because that would just be too much.  Would I have found Bed as enjoyable without the hoochies or the nakeditity?  Beats me. Why bother thinking about what doesn't exist?

Bed is about two couples who, through the course of the film, swap beds like it's going out of style.  Pedro (Guillermo Toledo, Intacto) and Paula (Natalia Verbeke, Jump Tomorrow) are together when Bed starts, but only briefly.  That's when Paula announces she's leaving him for another man.  Horrified, Pedro turns to Sonia (Paz Vega, Sex & Lucia) and Javier (Mathieu Kassovitz lookalike Ernesto Alterio) for solace.  But Pedro doesn't realize his girl left him for Javier.  And round and round they go, resulting in both numerous song-and-dance numbers and a whole lot of Jack Tripper-esque confusion.

The acting is all quite solid, especially when you consider the singing and dancing, which is more of the campy 8 Women variety than the gaudy numbers from Moulin Rouge.  Sadly, however, you may not get a chance to see it, as the Sundance Film Series is set to take off in just 10 cities, exclusively at the Loews Theatres chain.  Hopefully, if enough people from those select cities see Bed, it will turn up in markets all over the country.

1:44 –

for sexuality/nudity and language