Carmen Maura, Paul McCartney, and Jessica Chastain star in new releases, reviewed below, this week. Also on tap: films at BAMPFA.
Maura, known for her collaborations with Pedro Almodovar, gives a must-see performance in “Calle Malaga,” Moroccan writer-director Maryam Touzani’s enjoyable Spanish-language debut.
Cowritten with Nabil Ayouch, Touzani’s dramedy follows Maura’s character, Maria Angeles, a Spanish widow in her late 70s who has spent her entire life in Tangier, Morocco. Maria’s world is upended when her financially strapped daughter, Clara (Marta Etura), arrives from Madrid to sell Maria’s beloved family home. Given a choice of moving to Spain with Clara or living in a retirement facility, Maria resourcefully hatches a plan of her own. Her journey to independence includes an unexpected romance.
The movie lacks the emotional complexity of Touzani’s “The Blue Caftan.” Its mother-daughter material is particularly unremarkable.
But Touzani’s warmhearted but never sappy tone proves winning throughout, and, as in “The Blue Caftan,” Touzani’s flair for the romantic shines.
The film also scores points for its portrayal of older people as deserving, dynamic, and sexual.
Maura, for her part, makes it a sparkler. Displaying the comic gift that she brought to Almodovar’s “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” and “Volver,” she creates a delightful protagonist we’d follow anywhere.
Currently at Bay Area theaters.
“Man on the Run,” too, is a hard-to-resist comfort film — an appreciative ride through Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles years.
Directed by Morgan Neville (“20 Feet From Stardom”), the documentary focuses on McCartney’s other band, Wings, formed in 1971 by McCartney following the release of two low-profile solo albums made after the Beatles’ breakup.
McCartney’s fellow Wings members included Paul’s wife and creative collaborator, Linda McCartney; guitarist Denny Laine; and a frequently changing handful of other players.
McCartney’s cozy family vibe and silly love songs displeased many, but Wings eventually achieved critical and commercial success, especially with its “Band on the Run” album and world tour.
The film, which ends in the early 1980s with the demise of Wings and the death of John Lennon, isn’t a penetrating or revelatory portrait of McCartney, who, it should be noted, is credited as an executive producer.
But the wealth of archival materials it contains, including powerhouse concert footage and very-1970s news clips, make it clear that Wings was an impressive second act.
Photographs by Linda McCartney; pop-culture tidbits like the “Paul is dead” rumors; and interviews, albeit in voice-over form only, with fellow musicians, family members, and McCartney himself, enrich the picture.
Criticism comes from former Wings musicians, who say the band was Paul’s show, and that, as members, they felt like nobodies.
John Lennon’s son Sean Ono Lennon, meanwhile, calls McCartney’s often lambasted “Ram” solo album a masterpiece. He also attributes McCartney’s infamous “(It’s a) drag, isn’t it?” remark, in response to John Lennon’s death, to shock, not callousness.
Fans and newcomers alike should have a good time with this film, which, coming off a theatrical run, is available on Amazon Prime Video.
The themes are relevant but the characters are too despicable for palatability in Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco’s “Dreams,” an immigration drama and erotic thriller exploring power, inequality, and geographical and moral border crossings.
Jessica Chastain, who starred in Franco’s “Memory” (2023), plays Jennifer, a wealthy San Francisco philanthropist and socialite who presents herself as immigrant-friendly. Jennifer operates a ballet school in Mexico City, where she has become torridly involved with talented young dancer Fernando (played by American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Isaac Hernandez).
Jennifer wants Fernando to stay in Mexico, where they can be together comfortably and legally, but Fernando decides to cross the border to pursue a career in this hilly city.
Fed up when Jennifer refuses to acknowledge their relationship to the outside world, Fernando leaves.
Exercising her power and privilege, Jennifer takes desperate action to reunite the pair.
Additional developments involve a private investigator, deportation, and, defying credibility, the casting of Fernando in a major role in a San Francisco Ballet production.
Initially showing potential to become an urgent and provocative drama about immigration and passion, the film degenerates into an ugly and violent slog of betrayal, revenge, and obsession.
Neither the usually captivating Chastain, in icy mode here, nor Hernandez can make us care about these people, though Hernandez’s amazing ballet moves enable us to take Fernando seriously as a deserving artist.
Currently in Bay Area theaters.
BAMPFA, in Berkeley, which presents programs of recent releases and restored classics, has several film series opening this week.
“Fassbinder and the New German Cinema” (March 6–May 17) features films by the prolific Rainer Werner Fassbinder and other West German postwar directors. Coming up are Fassbinder’s “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” (1974) on Friday, March 6, and “The Merchant of Four Seasons” (1971), Sunday, March 8.
“Iranian Cinema: From Aesthetics to Politics” (March 7–April 23) includes digital restorations of three classic films made by Iranian New Wave directors. “The Postman” (1972), Dariush Mehrjui’s modern, Iran-set adaption of playwright Georg Buchner’s “Woyzeck,” screens Saturday, March 7.
BAMPFA’s African Film Festival (March 8–May 9) presents stories from Africa and its diaspora. On Sunday, March 8: “After the Long Rains” (2023), Damien Hauser’s coming-of-age drama centering on a Kenyan girl.
Visit bampfa.org for more information.
The Mechanics’ Institute, in San Francisco, will show the 1936 musical film “San Francisco,” directed by W. S. Van Dyke and featuring Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, and a disastrous temblor, at 6 p.m. Friday. For more information, or to register, visit milibrary.org.