Nothing is that simple, naturally, and once the three potential fathers have arrived, Sophie realises that she may have opened up a can of worms. Her attempt to keep the men hidden from her mother fails, and Donna is, unsurprisingly, disturbed to see all three of them turn up together after twenty years on the day before her daughter's wedding.
Donna doesn't guess that it's Sophie's doing, and confides to her old friends, single writer Rosie (Julie Walters) and wealthy divorcée Tanya (Christine Baranski), about the secret that she's kept for two decades and has now come back to haunt her.
Both Sophie's deception, and Donna's more serious, long-standing deception of Sophie have the potential to create a rift between them. But the bond between mother and daughter is a strong one, and they are quick to forgive.
Sophie is surprisingly unfazed by the discovery she makes in the pages of her mother's diary. She is clearly very surprised, but she seems to view her mother's sexual antics as bohemian, romantic and rather exciting. There is no sense that Donna's behaviour had been inappropriate. It's evidently acceptable, though still a little shocking, to have unprotected sex with three different men within a matter of days, two of which were one-night stands. After all, it resulted in a beautiful, well-adjusted daughter who has made her mother's life complete (Donna reflects at one point that she hasn't had sex in years and doesn't miss it). At one point, Sophie tells Donna, 'I don't care if you've slept with hundreds of men.'
On the other hand, Sam is censured for walking away from his relationship with Donna because he was already engaged. He had leapt onto the horns of a dilemma by leaping into Donna's bed: he had fallen in love with Donna and compromised his relationship with his fiancée, yet felt he still had a commitment to her and would inevitably have broken one heart or the other. It's hard to know what the right thing to do is when one has created a moral mess. At least Sam eventually apologises.
There is no sense here of the need for working at the life-long exclusive commitment that marriage entails. Tanya's three divorces are a source of amusement (and of her wealth, it seems) and Sophie is encouraged on more than one occasion not to actually marry Sky. At one point Sophie has a little outburst, saying that she doesn't want to repeat her mother's mistakes. Maybe she won't, but I wouldn't hold out much hope. We all know that in the contemporary world, marriage is often not the lasting thing it should be, as Tanya shows. But UK statistics show that those who only live together are likely to stay together for a significantly shorter period than those who formalise their commitment and get married.
In a society where commitment is such a short-lived and fickle thing, there is little incentive for anyone to take the long-term view and work to resolve the difficulties that inevitably arise. Unfortunately, Mamma Mia! seems to suggest that in the area of romantic relationships, you should just do whatever feels right at the time, and sort out the consequences twenty years down the line.
Although sex, romance and love are largely what this story revolves around, I think there are other profoundly significant themes being explored. Perhaps the most fundamental is that of identity. It is, of course, bound up to a large degree with our relationships with others, but not only romantic attachments.
Sophie believes that, 'everything will fall into place when I meet my dad,' because, 'it's about knowing who I am.' While she does seem wonderfully well-adjusted, she clearly feels that something vital is lacking through not knowing her father, and her imminent wedding brings this into sharp focus. It's hardly surprising, since the relationships with our parents are almost always the most decisive in making us who we are.
Of course there are many, like Sophie who miss out on knowing one or even both parents as they grow up, and they turn out just fine. But that doesn't mean that it's not hard for them, or that they don't feel the lack. Psychologist Oliver James argues in his book Britain on the Couch that what he refers to as 'broken attachments', fractured or non-existent significant relationships, is one of the two biggest causes of unhappiness in the Western world. It's no surprise that director Phyllida Lloyd says that, 'The story is the ultimate fairy tale. It touches something really fundamental in the audience about identity, about lost parents, lost children. It's an epic story.'
