Breast cancer is not exactly a subject that would draw in the public for a night at the movies. But this new film written and directed by Julio Medem stars the ever radiant Penélope Cruz who carries the film with hope and beauty. Yes, it's very melodramatic with nicely appointed homes, fashionable clothes, and Cruz's irrepressible beatific smile that seems to draw everyone into her world. There's really no character development, no back ground to explain the series of men who enter her universe and are immediately smitten. It's sad and heartbreaking, but you are not left with a wad of wet tissue afterwards.
Cruz plays Magda who finds out from her handsome doctor Julián (Asier Etxeandia) who begins the film doing a breast manipulation looking for lumps. This Europe after all, not like a US movie where showing a doctor manhandling a bare breast would be done “off camera”. He wants to send her for more X-rays and tests while she bemoans that all this extra stuff is happening on top of losing her teaching job, and her husband Raúl (Àlex Brendemühl) going off with one of his college students. She is left with her son, Dani (Teo Planell) who is crazy about soccer. At her son's soccer match she meets Arturo (Luis Tosar) who is a soccer scout who compliments her son's talents. In the middle of the conversation, Arturo gets a phone call that his wife and daughter were in a accident, so Magda goes with him to the hospital offering support. She continues to visit him daily while he waits for the inevitable. Telling her son, that she doesn't want to lose the connection for his soccer future.
Meanwhile she sends Dani off for the summer while she is getting chemo, not telling her son that she is sick and due to have a mastectomy. She leaves a cheeky message to her soon to be ex husband to make sure that he pays attention to Dani and not let him know what's going on. But of course he does, and they all end up at the hospital, but she tells her hubby to go, and Arturo who just lost his wife to stay. Soon she is living with Arturo, but they haven't had sex yet as their relationship is based on mutual emotional support. Not until she finds out from her doctor that the operation didn't work and now only has 6 more months to live. To keep up her hope, she finally gets Auturo in bed, and of course finds herself pregnant.
Outside of Cruz whom the camera loves, the rest of the cast seem to wander in her shadow. Arturo seems to just mope around, her doctor who also sings hangs out for some defined reason, the ex-husband says sorry a little to late, and Dani the doted son gets mad cause mom won't try to understand soccer and is creeped out by mom's prosthetic breast. There are some dreamy sequences involving a nipple on ice and an orphan from Siberia, which don't really make much sense, but then Penélope Cruz flashes that smile, and all is right in the world.
(Review by reesa)
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