Malena Is a Name from a Tango (Spanish: Malena es un nombre de tango) is a 1996 drama film directed by Gerardo Herrero from a screenplay by Senel Paz based on the novel by Almudena Grandes. It stars Ariadna Gil.

The plot concerns about the romantic and sexual endeavours of Malena, a victimised and rebellious woman contrasting to her twin sister Reina (who always was the model girl in the family), and then about the mother-son relationship of Malena with her son. Malena was gifted however a talisman by her grandfather back when she was 10.^[2][3]

An adaptation of the novel by Almudena Grandes, the screenplay was penned by Senel Paz. It is a Spanish-French-German co-production by Alta Films, Tornasol Films, Blue Dahlia Production, La Sept Cinema, and Road Movies Produktionen.^[8][3] Shooting locations included the San Julián estate (La Hoya [es], Lorca), Mula, Águilas, and Madrid.^[9]

Distributed by Alta Films, the film was theatrically released in Spain on 12 April 1996.^[8][5]

The film was the fifth highest grossing Spanish film of the year with a gross of 188 million Spanish Pesetas ($1.31 million).^[1]

Jonathan Holland of Variety deemed the film to be a "well-intentioned, provocatively moralizing women's pic that ends up as second-rate melodrama".^[3]

Luis Martínez of El País deemed that, efforts from a "magnetic" Ariadna Gil notwithstanding, the films "ends up as an uneven and quite chatty journey into the interiors of this disease called life".^[10]

• List of Spanish films of 1996