Please note: no ‘ospizio’, no ‘Parioli’.

Last night I entered a cinema and purchased a ticket without knowing anything about the film being shown (a somewhat risky move these days). I took my seat alongside a small audience, and Calle Malaga by Maryam Touzani began: a very elegant elderly lady, with lovely hair, a beautiful flat in Tangier, many friends in the neighbourhood and a network of shopkeepers ready to deliver her shopping to her door, receives a visit from her daughter who lives in Madrid; she is delighted to see her and has cooked a delicious lunch (having not had dinner, I was enchanted by those spicy meatballs). The mother is cheerful, her nails painted red; a widow for twenty years, she cooks whilst listening to songs on her lovely record player. Her daughter is young, sulky, and visibly stressed about her divorce; she has two young children whom she never brings to Tangier. She is warmly welcomed by her mother, the neighbours, and the shopkeepers who remember her from childhood, but within a few hours, looking glum, she drops the bombshell: she needs money; she can no longer afford to spend it all on rent; she wants to buy a small house just outside Madrid; this old flat, too big for one person, has been in her name ever since her father bought it; and she has already spoken to an estate agent and wants to sell it. In fact, she has to sell it, and she will sell it.

‘And what about me?’ says her mother, her lovely smile gone, firmly rooted in her rooms, in the rocking chair where she has sat for forty years listening to records, with the stained-glass chandelier and the geraniums on the balcony that she waters every evening and every morning, watching what’s going on in the street. ‘Mum, you’ll come to Madrid; come and live with me and the children. It’s the right time to be a grandmother. You’ve never worked a day in your life – what do you know of the hard work I do? Or, if you keep saying no, go to a care home; it’s like staying in a hotel, and for you, having been born in Tangier, it’s even free.’ The lady is opposed to the idea, appalled, and so are we: it is clear that that house is her life and that she is perfectly happy there; she is in excellent health, she does not need any care at all – there are flowers in the vase in the living room.

The author describes an urgent search for solutions and a growing sense of hostility toward her nearly forty-year-old daughter, who within days compelled her mother to clear the house and pack everything that could not be sold to a second-hand dealer into removal boxes and two suitcases. It is only the beginning of the film; I will not recount what happens next, although it represents a partial comeback, a rebellion that centres on the identity of an elderly mother who has no intention of ceasing to be a woman of desire and independence simply because of the limitations imposed by age. To hell with Madrid, to hell with the care home, to hell with other people’s expectations. Her daughter tells her: half your friends are dead, the other half are in Spain. So what? María Ángeles (the great actress Carmen Maura) has a sister who is a cloistered nun, to whom she goes to tell everything – especially the lies, the curses and the obscenities. And she also has a certain say over the cemetery and the condition of her friends’ graves. She has her memories; she has the sounds of the street, without which she cannot sleep. Upon leaving the cinema, I called my daughter. To my surprise, she answered. I confronted her: ‘You’re not putting me in a care home, OK? And I’m not moving from my neighbourhood. After everything I’ve done for you.’ ‘Mum, what’s the matter with you?’ ‘I know, I know. Just remember these words: no care home, no Parioli.’