CALLE MALAGA – Review by Lynn Venhaus
Films about final acts are often divided into sweet or sour, spirited or sad, and Calle Malaga is a stimulating blend of both, for Moroccan filmmaker Maryam Touzani starts with a negative but flips it into a positive.
Inspired by her grandmother (and dedicated to her), Touzani co-wrote this warm and tender drama with her husband, filmmaker Nabil Ayouch. Their exploration of a simple, gentle life cycle is invigorated by the expressive Spanish actress Carmen Maura.
As the vibrant 79-year-old widow, Maria Angeles Munoz, Maura commands the screen like a maestra seizing a baton.
Maria Angeles has lived in her spacious flat on the teeming street, Calle Malago, in Tangier for 40 years. She was born in the northern Moroccan city. Just like Tousani’s grandmother, she is connected to a large Spanish population that emigrated, starting in the 1930s, who fled the Franco regime.
No somber dirge here. Relatively healthy with a radiant smile, she knows everyone and merchants welcome her. The movie highlights the simple pleasures of everyday life – she tends to her geraniums in a window box, listens to albums on an old record player, and enjoys her friends and neighbors.
She is visited from her only child, daughter Clara (Marta Etura), who turns her mother’s world upside down in an ultimatum – move in with her and her two children in Madrid or move into the subsidized Spanish seniors’ assisted living residence in town.
Going through a messy divorce, Clara, a nurse, can’t keep her head above water, and because her father put her name on the lease, she determines this course of action. The crestfallen Maria packs her possessions, and that’s it – no say in the matter.
She’s miserable at the seniors’ home, going from her comfortable, bright space to a dingy dorm-like room with a single bed, group meals and activities. To her, it’s purgatory, so she hatches a clever plot to move back into her empty apartment and let the chips fall where they may.
She confides often to her childhood friend, Josefa (María Alfonsa Rosso), who is a cloistered nun. Maria, inconsolable, wonders how her cheerful little girl could grow up into such a bitter adult.
But her daring plan helps right her world again. Maria is not going gentle into the good night, for her passion and defiance swell, and it’s refreshing to watch her steely determination.
Renewed with the familiarity of a life she built, she has a spring in her step, and that includes an unexpected romance with Abslam, an antique dealer who was tasked with selling her furniture. As she works to buy her pieces back, mutual admiration reawakens her sensuality.
This rediscovery of love and desire is a charming aspect of the story, which takes its time to develop – and that’s fine. After all, these are seniors in sensible shoes who move at their own pace.
As the man who spices up her life in ways she never imagined, Ahmed Boulane, an acclaimed Moroccan director, is an intriguing addition.
Maura, a national treasure in Spain who has received more Goya Award leading actress honors (four) than anyone, has spent six decades bringing fully-dimensional women to life – Pepa in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is among the seven features she has made with Pedro Almodóvar.
Maria is a lovely addition to her rich body of work. She joins a “gray brigade” of feisty women who refuse to be dismissed or condescended to, and brim with resolve, like the recent characters played by June Squibb and those aging actress ensembles like 40 for Brady and the Book Club series.
This is the first Spanish-language film from Touzani, who directed Adam (2019) and The Blue Caftan (2021). Her choices include not wrapping up the story with a tidy ending, so that may be a letdown. After all, this is not a romantic comedy – although its moments of sentimentality resonate.
Her team has conveyed Maria’s home and neighborhood in a cozy fashion – especially her collaborator, cinematographer Virginie Surdej, capturing the light perfectly, and production designers Eve Martin and Samir Issoum astutely depicting a lifetime of memories. Freya Arde’s pleasant score compliments the moods well.
The official entry of Morocco for international feature at this year’s Academy Awards, it did not make the cut, but it received the Audience Award in the Venice Spotlight at the Venice Film Festival last August. It will be released in the U.S. on Feb. 6.
