Melodrama often pleases audiences but not film critics. This is probably going to be the case of Ma Ma, by Spanish film director Julio Medem and starring Penélope Cruz as Magda, a 40-ish mother whose life is falling apart. Having lost her job as schoolteacher and her husband, Magda visits gynaecologist Julian (Asier Etxeandia) only to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Soon she is –we are– faced with one of those big themes always at stake in melodrama: suffering, in this case relative suffering –and love– in the face of death. When later that day she is watching her son Dani (Teo Planell) play football Magda meets Real Madrid scout Arturo (Luis Tosar) at the very moment he is about to learn of a much deeper tragedy he will be dealing with. They start to support each other in a story that will last from summer to summer.
Medem is the owner of a personal style that will be familiar to those who have watched La ardilla roja/The Red Squirrel (1993), Los amantes del círculo polar/Lovers of the Arctic Circle (1998) or Lucía y el sexo/Sex and Lucía (2001). Illness, depression, fate, strange dreams, sex, death are the kinds of subject matters the Spanish director makes his characters go through in their existential quandaries. Although he does not shy away from the themes that are by now a recognisable characteristic, in terms of scrip Ma Ma is arguably the simplest and plainest of his films. This makes sense given that tragedy is omnipresent from the start, and especially since Hollywood and Spanish film star Penélope Cruz is who moves the plot forwards as she sees her body deteriorate.
It is visually that Medem’s recognisable traits show, and so do also some of melodrama’s typical stylistic features. Flash forwards representing Magda’s subjective need to predict the near future, cross cutting between sequences taking place consecutively (rather than simultaneously), and also between dream, or imagination, and reality, are some of the devices that, although visible, do not alter the sense of narrative linearity that prevails. One of melodrama’s most recognisable elements is colour excess, often used to saturate the stories with meaning (‘excess’ middlebrow audiences and critics sometimes find tacky). Colour tonality in Ma Ma changes with the moment, between cold blue when Magda is faced with her illness and its prospects, and vibrant red, when we’re reminded she’s alive, so alive as to even generate it. In the end it’s between these two poles Ma Ma moves to remind us how fragile we are.
Ma Ma is out now in cinemas
