Mami Blue

Mami Blue is a broad and genial road movie comedy that is unlikely to travel far beyond Spanish-speaking territories, but is engagingly distinctive due to the strong lead performances by Maria Alfonsa Rosso and Lorena Vindel as the two women who make a break for personal freedom as they drive across Spain.

No cliché is left untapped, but at least Mami Blue delivers good-natured entertainment.

This light-weight Thelma & Louise tale is fun and frothy, though far too mainstream to work for the art house brigade. Despite that, the two leads have featured in classy Spanish fare  – Maria Alfonsa Rosso in Volver, and Lorena Vindel in Seven Billiard Tables – and the comedy is innocently accessible.

Rosso stars as pensioner Teresa who has been put into an old folk’s home by her busy son, to be cared for by Luz Estela (Vindel). When Estela’s boyfriend threatens her, the pair make a bid for freedom in the boyfriend’s car…which also happens to be the hiding place for stolen goods.

As the pair head across country – Teresa for the country home of her youth and Luz for the Portuguese bar ‘Mami Blue’ where her long-lost love now works – they are chased by gangsters, the boyfriend, Teresa’s son and the cops (for some reason Teresa robs a roadside store and steals a lifesize dummy with an Elvis wig).

No cliché is left untapped, but at least Mami Blue delivers good-natured entertainment, with Lorena Vindel - whose work has mainly been on television - a talent to watch as she handles comedy and drama with ease.