Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Without Men Blu-ray Movie Review

Comedy Without Substance

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 30, 2011

Watching this latest Blu-ray release from Maya Entertainment, I found myself thinking of the critical gripe that no one knows how to make a good romantic comedy anymore. But is that the fault of the filmmakers or the audience? Art and popular entertainment respond to trends and instincts of their age, even if it's to react against them. The audience that reliably turned up to see Tracy and Hepburn spat and reconcile no longer exists. The politics of relations between the sexes -- and I'm using the term "politics" in the broadest possible sense, from the codes that govern intimate one-on-one relations to the most formalized and ritualized group interactions -- have become fragmented and multi-angled to the point where many people don't know which end is up. What's right? What's heartfelt? What's important? What's acceptable? What's offensive? And what's funny?

Argentinian-born writer/director Gabriela Tagliavini seems to have been wrestling with such questions when she made Without Men. Instead of exploring relations between the sexes through a single couple or even multiple couples (as was tried with some success in the recent Crazy Stupid Love), Tagliavini took the approach of largely removing men from the picture and letting an entire village of women react to their absence. But to keep things light and entertaining, she applied tropes and styles borrowed from both sitcoms and teen sex comedies such as Porky's to source material that was, in its original form, entirely serious (James Cañón's novel, Tales from the Town of Widows). The result is completely (and deliberately) unrealistic, sometimes amusing and frequently baffling, but it's also unlike anything I've ever seen. It certainly kept my attention.

Once upon a time In a place mucho, mucho far away . . .
The phrase quoted above opens the film, and its framing device is a harried reporter, Gordon (Christian Slater), who's been sent to South America to get a story, any story. His boss (Camryn Mannheim) is a castrating bitch who doesn't want to hear about whatever obstacles Gordon may be encountering. Films have to establish their rules at the outset, and as if the jokey Star Wars reference weren't enough, Tagliavini winks at the audience with the first phone call between Gordon and the home office, as the boss takes Gordon's call while being "serviced" by a young male staffer crouching under her desk. (In any real office environment today, no female executive would risk either the embarrassment or the lawsuit.) Clearly, Without Men and reality will intersect rarely, if at all.

Gordon's guide, a kid (Luis Chavez) whose name is never given, claims not to be able to read but speaks fluent English, and he offers to help. For reasons that won't make any sense unless you study the closing credits closely (and still won't make much sense even then), he says he's bought a handwritten book that might contain a story Gordon can use. The book turns out to be the diary of Rafael (Oscar Nuñez), village priest of the remote town of Mariquita, where many women are beautiful, men aren't too macho and life once was peaceful. Then, one day a guerilla unit led by Camacho (Paul Rodriguez, in what amounts to an extended cameo) rolled into town and forcibly drafted all the men except Father Rafael and a child-like man, Julio (Reynaldo Pacheco), whom his sister, Cecilia (Mónica Huarte), disguised as a woman. The town's mayor, Campo Elias (Guillermo Diaz), was shot and apparently killed as an example to the others.

But the real power behind the mayor was his wife, Rosalba (Eva Longoria, a long way from Wisteria Lane). With all of the traditional (i.e., male) bastions of power removed, it falls to Rosalba to take over. It's not an easy task, because old habits are hard to break -- and in a light- hearted, and sometimes even trivial manner, Tagliavini takes her town of women through a host of stock feminist predicaments, from learning to do "men's work" (like changing light bulbs, fixing plumbing and learning about electrical wiring), to burying rivalries over men (Rosalba must reconcile with Ubaldina (Fernanda Romero), with whom her husband was having an affair), to overcoming class differences (the town prostitutes, led by Lucrecia (Maria Conchita Alonso), must be integrated into the collective), to finally dispensing with men altogether.

This last lesson arrives courtesy of a roguish wanderer named Cleotilde (Kate Del Castillo from Weeds and Under the Same Moon), who shows up in Mariquita one day offering her services as a teacher. Father Rafael immediately characterizes her as "El Diablo", which is exactly what you would expect a Catholic priest to think of a militant feminist and (almost) out lesbian. As it happens, Father Rafael thinks about sex a great deal, and recently he's become preoccupied with procreation. If there are no men to impregnate the women, how can the village survive?

Fortunately, God provides a solution. He orders the loyal priest to break his vow of celibacy and copulate with every woman of child-bearing age as an act of worship -- or so Father Rafael tells his flock, thereby demonstrating once again that virtually any scam can be sold by cloaking it in religious garb. The sequence that follows plays like a cross between soft-core porn and a teen sex comedy, but it has an unexpected outcome. Having roused the entire village's sexual appetites, Father Rafael finds himself in the position of the proverbial kid in the candy store with a stomachache. And that's when the women of Mariquita realize they've been had and run him out of town.

Narrative snags occur at this point, because the diary that George has been reading comes to an end. Fortunately, though, Without Men is set in that part of the world where the storytelling device of magical realism was invented; so these snags are untangled with a few quick strokes and the story resumes. After ridding themselves of Father Rafael, the women of Mariquita complete their journey toward discovering what it means to live without men and build a better world. Rosalba falls in love with Cleotilde, but eventually she discovers the sacrifices required when one is the leader of a community. As for George, he finds the town and what he thinks will be the news story of his career. But he's faced with a moral dilemma, as he realizes that drawing the world's attention to the town will destroy what the women have achieved on their own, because it can only exist in isolation. Meanwhile, George's boss is still breathing down his neck.

Several of the men pressed into service by the guerillas manage to escape and make their way back to Mariquita. The town to which they return is not the one they remember. How they adjust to the new reality is the narrative equivalent of the final reconciliation in a traditional romantic comedy. It's interesting, if not entirely satisfying.

Without Men Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

I haven't been able to find definitive information, but if I've interpreted the credits and image correctly, Without Men was shot on digital video (the credited cinematographer is Andrew Strahorn). The 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray image indicates that the scenes in Mariquita, which constitute the bulk of the film, have been heavily manipulated to deepen and enrich the color palette for an artificially rich and luxurious warmth and depth. This contrasts starkly with scenes involving George, which are less saturated, and even more so with his boss stateside, which are positively chilly and desaturated by comparison. The visual message is so obvious that it hardly needs stating, and it's reinforced by the production and costume design. Mariquita looks less like a town and more like a collection of sets for a weekly TV series, and the supposedly poor women who live there seem to have a limitless supply of fine-looking outfits that fit them better than in a Victoria's Secret catalogue. Even the priestly garments that Father Rafael describes as being made of baggy polyester have a better drape than any polyester I've ever seen. Despite all the talk of cleaning, there is nary a speck of dust or dirt in evidence. As is often the case in comedy, this is a fantasy world in which no trial or tribulation is ever too real.

The image is detailed but on the soft side, which is consistent with both the film's themes and the likely need to disguise limitations in the production budget. Certainly the softness appears to be intentional, rather than a flaw in the transfer, because there is never a sense that detail is being blurred or blown out by excessive contrast. Black levels are good, and no evidence appears of DNR or other inappropriate filtering. I did not see any compression or other artifacts.

Without Men Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Maya has yet to embrace lossless audio. As is typical of its releases, the DD 5.1 soundtrack is identical to what one would expect on DVD. However, the track is effective at reproducing what is largely a front-oriented mix with limited use of the surrounds. In the film's opening, a fly can be heard buzzing to the right before it lands in the foreground, but after that I barely noticed the presence of the rear speakers. This is a functional mix that emphasizes dialogue, voiceover narration and the mood-setting score by Carlo Siliotto (who also scored Under the Same Moon). The track also contains an interesting selection of Latin-inflected songs, of which by far the most memorable plays over the closing titles. It's sung by Charo (remember her?) and is entitled, appropriately enough, "Cuchi Cuchi".

Without Men Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no extras. At startup, the disc plays trailers for Sympathy for Delicious, Forged, All She Can, Where the Road Meets the Sun, Didi Hollywood and Blue Eyes. All but the last can be skipped with the chapter forward button, and none are available once the disc loads.

Without Men Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Like many authors who have sold their books to film companies, James Cañón took the healthy attitude that the film was an independent work. "If the novel is a tragedy with a touch of humor, the film is a comedy with a touch of tragedy", he was quoted as saying. A very light touch indeed. By the film's conclusion, it struck me that Tagliavini was so determined not to ruffle her audience out of the comfortable space of laughter that she'd stylized the film to the point of abstraction. Nothing about the town of Mariquita feels believable or human, and the same is true of George and his grotesque of a boss. Despite the best efforts of the actors, many of whom do fine work, their characters are doomed to inhabit extended comedy sketches, because they haven't been given a credible world in which to breathe. Many successful sitcoms have been founded on such characters, but that's because viewers come back weekly to watch familiar figures repeat the same ridiculous behavior. Without Men is supposed to be about people who grow and change, but that only happens in a world that feels real. Tagliavini is an interesting talent and someone to watch, but I can't recommend Without Men for more than a rental.