Apr 03, 2026
3 min read
Mariam Tuzani's film focuses on seemingly insignificant values and important moments that end up being the foundation of peace.
'Calle Málaga': the famous Carmen Maura claims the dignity of an older woman in her home
Maryam Tauzani's film emphasizes the seemingly insignificant values and important moments that form the basis of a quiet existence.
Karen Blixon had a farm in Africa and Marie Engels has a house on Malaga Street in Tangier.And although the description of the house of the real author of Out of Africa (under the pseudonym Isaac Dinesen) and the apartment of the fictional character played by Carmen Moura in Mariam Touzani's film are very different, the feeling is mutual: their place in the world;Not just their own room but their own existence;A sense of individuality beyond any tradition, of female dignity.emotion;Celebration of women's freedom.
Rue Malaga, the third Moroccan directorial film to be screened at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, arrives in our country cinema after its success in France.The real victory for a film tells almost entirely in Spanish about an old woman who lost her world and regained it in anger and sought refuge in something less discussed, such as dating and sex in old age.
Now the dignity of a rebellious grandmother towards a selfish daughter (of which Marta Etura seems tired) is lost and burdened by a lifestyle contrary to her mother, based on pure resistance to the force of the tide of work, not the only great subject of Calle Málaga.Casablanca (2000) and the frightening revelation of the unification of jihad The Horses of God (2012) - the film script is really the unequal love and inequality of children.Multiculturalism It becomes a special emphasis on seemingly insignificant values and important moments that end the basis of a peaceful existence: being able to look out on your balcony and talk to your neighbors.
It is in these apparently dead times when Calle Málaga confirms its ironclad state of just demand.And not so much when it forces transitions between sequences with a certain crude symbolism (the churros in the oil), when the dialogues become too explicit, or when the universality of football gives rise to scenes with excessively thick lines.However, as Touzani already demonstrated in his previous film, the charming sentimental triangle of The Blue Caftan (2022), the beautiful interludes of his protagonist through the streets of Tangier or alone at home (but not alone) provide the viewer with the most pleasant moments of the whole.
Homage to the city of Tangier (director), to the way of life and being in the world, Calle Malaga would not be what it is without the great Carmen Maura, natural, fresh and talented, in a role in which she has to say almost everything without words and where she physically immerses herself with a half-naked man in the half-dark Moroccan darkness. A sequence that somehow reminds of Liv Ullman's act in Sarabanda, Ingmar Bergman's Testament.The house of Marie Angeles on Málaga Street is nothing more and nothing less than a place where the peaceful spirit of a bright woman who did not want to give up resides.
Director: Maria Touzani.
Performer: Carmen Maura, Marta Etura, Ahmed Boulane, María Alfonsa Rosso.
Genre: Drama. Fas, 2025.
Duration: 116 minutes.
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