Ma Ma

Penélope Cruz delivers one of her best and most heartfelt performances in this emotional drama about a woman confronting illness, the end of her marriage, and the future of her family. Cruz stars as Magda, a Madrid woman who has recently been laid off from her teaching job, and whose college professor husband has run off with one of his students. As she struggles to raise her young, soccer-crazed son, Dani, she learns she has bigger problems: a diagnosis of breast cancer. As she begins arduous chemotherapy, she befriends a grieving man named Arturo (Luis Tosar), whose wife and daughter were in a terrible accident. The two bond and Arturo helps Magda and Dani navigate a new set of obstacles. In MA MA, writer-director Julio Medem (“Sex and Lucia”) looks at love, loss, and motherhood, while steering towards the ethereal. Magda keeps seeing the dream-like presence of a pale, young girl. Who is she? And what do these visions mean? (In Spanish with subtitles) –C.O.