Kiti Mánver is Cruz, a Sevillian dressmaker who lives with her husband and granddaughter. One day, by pure chance, she enters a porn website and that awakens her sexual desire. Cruz, who until now has lived between work, domestic chores and religious services, joins some classes on self-knowledge with other ladies and this allows her to open doors and also make new friends, although always, for those things of the religion, with a little bit of guilt.
This is how Mamacruz begins, a fun and delicate film, directed by the Venezuelan Patricia Ortega and starring a splendid Kiti Mánvez. "The idea of writing this film arose when my mother got older and I had to take care of her. One day I was putting her things away and I found a beautiful photo of her naked. For me it was a discovery, because my mother never had a partner, never "I met her boyfriend, I didn't know about her love life," explains Ortega in an interview with La Vanguardia during her time at Seminci where Mamacruz, who was also in Sudance and which today hits Spanish screens, has participated.
From then on, Ortega was very clear that "it is important that we do not see our mothers or grandmothers as asexual beings" so she delved into the matter "exploring the topic with my aunts and their friends and I saw that it was a generational issue, as if when menopause comes, a woman stops being desirable. "The interesting thing is that at that age it is not necessary to just be an object of desire, it is also possible to be a subject of desire and that is why I turned Mamacruz into the subject of her own desire," adds the director.
Cruz begins to get to know her body thanks to conversations with the sexuality workshop instructor and the rest of the students, and also to the sex toys whose benefits she learns in that classroom. This learning also allows him to gain self-esteem, change his hairstyle, groom himself more and appreciate her body again. The protagonist of Mamacruz rediscovers herself when she already thought that sex was a thing of the past: "Women are forced to make decisions, such as being mothers or living as a couple, that affect our lives," says Ortega.
Kiti Mánvez was the first choice of the filmmaker, who was sure that the actress was going to reject the role, but that was not the case and between them a relationship was first established "of empathy and then of trust and love, because we had the same vision of the world and how to talk about female sexuality". Other professional and accidental actresses were added to the cast and "that created a naturalness and spontaneity, which is reflected in the film, where this group of women can speak openly and suggest things, since they became an intimate circle," concludes the director who He filmed Mamacruz between Seville and Tenerife.
