We tend to judge our own North American sensibilities harshly when it comes to issues of sex and assume that Europeans are much more mature.

I'm here to tell you that that's not always the case. Almodovar aside, many popular movies from Spain have a tittering quality about them, particularly as regards homosexuality. In many respects, movies like My Mother Likes Women and the recent musical The Other Side Of The Bed treat gays mainly as exotic birds, punchlines and plot devices, a la Hollywood in the '80s.

I'd ascribe it to arching machismo, but My Mother Likes Women -- in which a mom tells her three neurotic daughters that the new love of her life is a woman, with ensuing hijinks -- is almost entirely a product of female moviemaking.

Almost no one in this film acts or reacts the way someone would on planet Earth. The mother Sofia (Rosa Maria Sarda) is a divorced concert pianist who has fallen for Eliska (Eliska Sirova) a younger virtuoso from the Czech Republic. When she breaks the news to her grown daughters, they immediately do what you or I would do -- begin hatching zany schemes to break them apart, as if this were an episode of the hilarious '50s sitcom Yo Amo Lucy.

First up is youngest daughter Sol (Silvia Abascal) who goes the humiliation route, writing a graphic rock song about her mother's sexual taste and pointedly inviting Sofia and Eliska to hear the song played live.

Then comes plan B, seduce Eliska so that mom tosses her out for infidelity. To that end they try taking her to a lesbian meet-market (full of gorgeous lipstick-lesbians, save for the most predatory one who looks like K.D. Lang), then Sol tries seducing Eliska herself. Finally Sol and Jimena (Maria Pujalte) elect middle child Elvira (Leonor Watling) to do the seducing because she has actually started to have a rapport with the Czech woman.

This pretty much presses Elvira's neurosis-button, as she's already questioning her sexuality in light of her checkered history with men. A famous author (Chisco Amado) begins pursuing her ardently, and she acts like such a nutcase she makes Ally McBeal look centred.

But back to Sofia, who repeatedly professes her love of Eliska to be deep and true -- except that she tosses her out at the first zany misunderstanding that hints of infidelity. Realizing the error of their ways, the girls fly off to Prague to bring her back. Eliska, who's been little more than a pretty cipher to this point, finally begins to speak for herself. But her soliloquy about why she can only be a complete person in her native land isn't addressed at all in the film's gimmicky ending.

The actresses -- particularly Watling (Talk To Her) -- are all charming, and amp the cuteness level of this little sexual identity sitcom. It may in fact be too cute by half for some tastes.

(This film is rated 14-A)

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