Cruz comes on strong as single mom in worthy ‘Ma Ma’
Published 6:01 pm Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Although she has enjoyed a nice run as a Hollywood actress, Penelope Cruz keeps returning to Spain for meatier roles than she gets in English-language films. You can understand why this might be more appealing than playing yet another “love interest” to Johnny Depp or Matthew McConaughey.
“Ma Ma” is one of those big roles, the kind of part Bette Davis might have made a meal of in the 1940s. Cruz plays Magda, a single mom newly abandoned by her cheating husband.
She learns she has breast cancer in the first minutes of the film. Thus begins a journey that, with a touch or two of magical realism, will carry Magda through the most intense year of her life.
Immediately after receiving the diagnosis, she goes to see her son (Teo Planell) play soccer. There’s a soccer scout attending the game, Arturo (Luis Tosar, a beetle-browed Spanish star); he and Magda get into a pleasant conversation about her son’s prospects as a player.
In the first of the film’s strange twists, Arturo takes a phone call and learns that his wife and daughter have been seriously hurt in a car crash. This brings him into Magda’s life in a way that will become permanent.
Writer-director Luis Medem, whose curious career has included “Sex and Lucia,” is not afraid to reach for the stars. “Ma Ma” drags in a subplot about a near-mystical Russian girl (somehow this almost makes sense), and its sincerity comes very close to being overbearing.
It certainly doesn’t unfold along predictable lines, as Arturo has his own issues and Magda’s doctor (Asier Exteandia) is revealed as a complicated character who loves singing (and indulges in an oddly close relationship to his patient).
I didn’t believe everything that happened in “Ma Ma,” but it had enough change-ups to keep me interested. For instance, we might assume that Spanish men will be macho to a fault, yet in this movie it’s Arturo and the doctor who are always breaking down in tears, while Magda is unflagging in her endurance.
The main reason to see the film is Cruz’s performance, which is consistently fresh and emotionally honest. She doesn’t play the martyr, but catches a fine range of irritation, resolve, and even humor. A role worth going back to Europe for.
“Ma Ma” 2 1/2 stars
Penelope Cruz gives a complex performance as a single mother newly shocked by a breast cancer diagnosis. Director Julio Medem brings in odd magical-realism touches, and the movie’s sincerity is almost overbearing, but Cruz makes it worth seeing. In Spanish, with English subtitles.
Rating: R, for nudity, subject matter
Showing: Sundance Cinemas
