An elderly woman from the village brings his husband, a tyrannic drunkard, to hospital in Sevilla. While he is there she lives in the apartment of her daughter María.
María is not too pleased with her mother's presence because she has a lot of problems herself: She is not content with her life as a cleaning woman, she has a serious alcohol problem, and she is pregnant by a graceless truck-driver who refuses any responsibility and wants her to make an abortion.
María first refuses all help from her mother who has to spend her days alone in the city. She makes the acquaintance of her daughter's neighbour (Carlos Ávarez, absolutely brilliant), a widower who lives alone with his dog and falls in love with María's mother.
So, the two lonely (solas) women have to make their decisions: María if she wants to keep her baby (which she herself sees as the only possibility to change her sad life), her mother if she leaves her useless husband who had always treated her badly and who had chased away his children from his house...
I was very touched by this movie whilst I could not believe what the mother had borne in her life. But my Spanish girl-friend told me that this was absolutely usual for the older generation, especially in Andalusía.
The atmosphere of this movie is very gloomy, but it has its moments of hope. (Very interesting the changes of light in these scenes.) All in all, a very good movie, I gave it a 10.
As we see, Spain is not always what it seems to be: When we left the cinema, it rained.
María is not too pleased with her mother's presence because she has a lot of problems herself: She is not content with her life as a cleaning woman, she has a serious alcohol problem, and she is pregnant by a graceless truck-driver who refuses any responsibility and wants her to make an abortion.
María first refuses all help from her mother who has to spend her days alone in the city. She makes the acquaintance of her daughter's neighbour (Carlos Ávarez, absolutely brilliant), a widower who lives alone with his dog and falls in love with María's mother.
So, the two lonely (solas) women have to make their decisions: María if she wants to keep her baby (which she herself sees as the only possibility to change her sad life), her mother if she leaves her useless husband who had always treated her badly and who had chased away his children from his house...
I was very touched by this movie whilst I could not believe what the mother had borne in her life. But my Spanish girl-friend told me that this was absolutely usual for the older generation, especially in Andalusía.
The atmosphere of this movie is very gloomy, but it has its moments of hope. (Very interesting the changes of light in these scenes.) All in all, a very good movie, I gave it a 10.
As we see, Spain is not always what it seems to be: When we left the cinema, it rained.