Why ¿Quién me quiere a mí? feels like a relic from another lifetime

Is it worth your time?

If you like old black-and-white melodramas where the villains twirl their mustaches and the heroines weep in soft lighting, sure. If you get bored by stiff dialogue or people acting like they’re on a stage even when they’re just standing in a kitchen, skip it. It’s definitely not for everyone, especially if you have a low tolerance for movies that try way too hard to make you cry.

Marta is a soprano, right? So the movie keeps trying to lean into this high-art opera vibe. But then the husband shows up, and suddenly we’re in cheap crime thriller territory. It’s a bit jarring. One minute she's holding a high note, the next he's trying to scam her out of her life savings. Talk about a personality clash.

The melodrama dial is turned to eleven

The husband is just the worst. There’s no subtlety here. He’s the kind of guy who probably kicks puppies when the camera isn't looking. Watching him try to pull off this kidnapping scheme is honestly more frustrating than it is tense. You want to reach through the screen and tell Marta to just get a better lawyer.

I couldn't help but think about how much sharper the writing is in something like The Threepenny Opera. That movie has teeth. This one? It feels a little soft, almost like it’s afraid of its own shadow. It reminds me a bit of the domestic messiness in Her Other Husband, but without the wit.

• The lighting in the bedroom scenes is surprisingly moody.
• I swear one of the extras in the background is just reading a newspaper the whole time.
• The soprano singing parts are... well, they happen.

There’s this one scene where she’s crying, and she stays in the pose for, I don’t know, like ten seconds too long? It stops being sad and starts being weirdly performative. I sat there waiting for her to blink. She didn't blink. It was intense.

It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s a time capsule. You watch it and you see how they used to tell stories before everything became so fast and loud. It’s slow. Sometimes it’s too slow. But there’s a charm to the clunkiness that I can't quite shake off. Maybe I’m just a sucker for old films 🤷‍♂️.

Don't expect a revelation. It’s just a story about a bad guy doing bad things. Sometimes that's enough, even if the execution feels like it's missing a few gears.