The Audience Award winner in the Spotlight section of the Venice Film Festival, and having its Nort
The Audience Award winner in the Spotlight section of the Venice Film Festival, and having its North American premiere Tuesday at the Toronto Film Festival, the crowd-pleasing Calle Malaga is a lovely ode to growing ancient but not giving in to age, to living life as it is meant to be lived – on your own terms.
The film from Moroccan director Maryam Touzani, whose acclaimed 2022 pic The Blue Caftan was on the Oscar shortlist, also is a gift for beloved Spanish star Carmen Maura (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Volver), who is best known for her long association with Pedro Almodóvar but here gets a full-blown lead as a widow trying to outsmart her daughter and remain in her home on a sunlit street in Tangiers.
That is how we meet Maria Angeles, a 74-year-old who has daily routines with the street vendors, knows everyone by their first name and has settled into a wonderful domestic bliss spending her days in peace, listening to her favorite music on her treasured record player. When her daughter, Clara (Marta Etura), comes to visit, she is at first cheerful but soon not so much when Clara, going through a nasty divorce and dealing with her kids and compact of money, announces she is selling Maria’s house and her childhood home.
She can do that because her father signed it over to her shortly before he died in order to make things go more smoothly. Maria fights this idea, but the choice is plain: Either come back to live with her in Madrid or move into the local retirement home — where one cherished spot has opened up and to get it they have to decide quickly. Finally rather than fight, Maria goes along with Choice No. 2. Clara brings in a dealer, Abslaine (a perfect Ahmed Boulane), to buy up the furnishings and items (including that prized record player) and moves Maria into the home.
She should have thought about this since Maria has devious plans of her own. After a rocky few first days Maria announces to the staff she has decided to move to Madrid after all, gathers her things and summons her faithful friend and driver. Only they aren’t going to the airport but rather back to her home, which is empty but still unsold. Suddenly Maria is a squatter, but a savvy one. She slowly buys back all her furniture piecemeal and puts the life she had back together like a puzzle. Unfortunately the record player was sold, but retrieving it will become another part of this adventure. Abslaine drives her to where they will find it, and this is all part of a budding romance, an unexpected late-in-life sexual relationship that goes along with her renewed spirit.
To make money, Maria schemes to sell spots in her living room to the locals, adolescent and ancient sports fans, to watch the football games on her television. It’s party time! She also bribes the real estate agent not to tell her daughter that she no longer is at the home but instead is home.
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The lilting Calle Malaga, Morocco’s official entry for the International Feature Film Oscar, is a joy largely because of its veteran star who envelops the screen and grabs a role of a career. Maura is as good as it gets, and while the script by Touzani and her husband Nabil Ayouch may be breezy and without a whole lot of complexity, it amusingly and poignantly delivers exactly what the older art house viewers will be lining up for. There is no doubt in my mind why it became an audience winner in Venice, and perhaps might be again in Toronto with its modern People’s Choice International Award this year.
Producers are Ayouch, Amine Benjelloun and Jean-Rémi Ducourtioux.
Title: Calle Malaga
Festivals: Venice (Spotlight); Toronto (Special Presentations)
Director: Maryam Touzani
Screenwriters: Maryam Touzani and Nabil Ayouch
Cast: Carmen Maura, Marta Etura, Ahmed Boulane, María Alfonsa Rosso, Miguel Garcés
Sales agent: Films Boutique
Running time: 1 hr 56 mins
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