Released 2025 (Morocco/Spain)

SUNDAY 16 August 2026 – 10.00 am
TUESDAY 18 August 2026 – 8.15 pm
RUNNING TIME 1 hour 56 minutes

Synopsis:

A spirited 79-year-old Spanish woman who has spent her life in Tangier’s Spanish quarter finds her life upended when her daughter returns from Madrid determined to sell the family apartment

Review: David Rooney

For those of us who have loved Carmen Maura since the first of her 

seven features with Pedro Almodóvar 45 years ago, watching her expressive face in Calle Málaga is its own wondrous reward. Now 80, the veteran Spanish actress shines in a rare later-life leading role as a woman suddenly robbed of her independence only to seize it back and run with it for as long as it lasts. 

Those turns of fortune would be legible even if this were a silent movie; we watch the vibrancy drain from Maura’s eyes in moments of defeat and sorrow, only to return with a glint of mischievous triumph, and later, invigorating sensuality.

The film was inspired by and is dedicated to director Maryam Touzani’s grandmother, part of the large Spanish community in Tangier that had fled the Franco regime and settled in the Northern Moroccan city in the 1930s. It doesn’t match the subtlety or complexity of Touzani’s gorgeous 2022 Cannes discovery The Blue Caftan, about a queer relationship triangle. But it does have comparable intimacy, delicacy and suppleness that draw you in, making even the more predictable story beats forgivable. Most of all, it has Maura in magnificent form. 

In poignant scenes at intervals throughout, Maura’s María Ángeles visits the cemetery where many from her circle of friends, along with her husband, are buried. As she lovingly tends the graves and at one point assembles the pieces of a broken tombstone like a jigsaw puzzle, it’s impossible not to think of the exquisite opening of Almodóvar’s Volver, in which women from the pueblo gather to wash their ancestors’ burial sites in an annual tradition. 

Like Volver, Calle Málaga also deals with a testy mother-daughter relationship. At first, Maura is delighted to welcome her daughter Clara (Marta Etura), on one of her infrequent visits from Madrid, as are the neighbours and shopkeepers who have known her since childhood. But Clara soon bluntly informs her mother that a messy divorce and the difficulties of raising her kids on a nurse’s salary have made it necessary for her to sell the Tangier apartment, which her father put in her name to avoid complications.

It scarcely seems to have occurred to Clara that her mother might not jump at the chance to come live with her grandchildren in the Spanish capital. But María Ángeles indignantly tells her she was born in Tangier and intends to die there. Her connection to the city is a large part of what defines her. Clara offers the alternative of a room in a subsidized assisted living facility for Spanish seniors, stressing that they need to move fast to get in on an opening.

The film strikes a melancholy note in its observations of how a parent and child can grow apart, as María Ángeles talks of the difficulty in reconciling the happy child Clara was with the bitter adult she has become.

Touzani, who co-wrote Calle Málaga with her husband, producer and fellow director Nabil Ayouch, shows her customary sensitivity in suggesting the ways in which a physical space can contain an entire lifetime of precious memories. If the script is a tad heavy-handed in making Clara seem almost indifferent to her mother’s suffering, Touzani is too generous a director not to allow the character some redeeming displays of conscience before the domestic drama plays out. Likewise, Abslam reveals a softer side, forcing María Ángeles to admit to Josefa that maybe he’s not the “cabrón” she thought.

Given no choice, María Ángeles acquiesces to her daughter’s wishes and moves into the seniors’ home, where a hilarious exchange with a hairdresser wanting to chop off her long silver tresses typifies her iron-willed refusal to settle in. No sooner has Clara returned to Madrid than María Ángeles checks herself out with some convincing deception and returns to her now-emptied apartment to begin again.

As with other grey-empowerment films like Thelma, there’s a touch of corniness in María Ángeles’ determination and resilience, which extends to a hint of blackmail to stop the real estate agent from blabbing to Clara. But Maura never overdoes the feisty granny bit. She keeps the character so warm and grounded that most viewers — especially those over a certain age — will be happy to go with it. 

Source: www.thehollywoodreported.com  ~ David Rooney 3/10/25 Edited extracts accessed 18/5/26.