A Penélope's film is directed by Julio Medem follows a patient who suffers a breast cancer. Passing over the pain, she and her family react with the tragedy, which makes them close together.
Though Ma ma's melodramatic DNA is hampered by Medem's austere aesthetic, there's still enough inherent emotional power to satisfy the casual arthouse crowd looking for alternative foreign fare this summer.
Not unlike Ali MacGraw in the equally apocryphal Love Story, the closer our heroine inches toward death's door, the more physically attractive she becomes. Phooey!
Though it stars the versatile, always watchable Penélope Cruz, who shows an expected flair for charismatic saintliness, even she can't rescue this impossibly beatific melodrama.
