Biutiful

Don’t let the happy title fool you. This is not your Sunday afternoon, “Like Water for Chocolate“, feel-good-type movie. Biutiful is dark, exploring some of the worst of the human condition in the underworld of Barcelona, Spain. In fact, if you can’t recognize the Spanish accent of the actors, you’ll very well think this movie was filmed in a third world country. A commonality between Spanish director Pedro Almodovar and Mexican Alejandro Gonzàlez Iñàrritu who directed Biutiful, is that they often choose the topics that are most tabu and pair them with the most tormented characters (people you’d never want to be). They then drop them in the worst possible scenarios and somehow still manage to extract not just the gross, but also the beauty out of impossibility. Like a flower growing solo in the midst of a land fill, Biutiful will both fascinate and disgust you, sadden you and make you smile. Family dynamics, substance abuse, mental illness, Chinese human trafficking/forced labor, greed and the fight for survival among the Spanish poor and immigrants are some of the issues playing out in this film.

Javier Bardem is magnificent. I last saw him in ¨Vicky Cristina Barcelona¨ – a Woody Allen film where he played an airy Spanish artist enticing two American women to a weekend rendezvous. Bardem is so versatile and convincing, he can go from comedy to dark drama and make both characters so believable, you can’t imagine him being anyone else. There is a depth and a humility in his art that comes through differently, yet appealingly in each of his characters. He is easily my favorite actor these days. Next, I might watch him in Jamòn Jamòn for a lighter story co-starred with his now wife Penelope Cruz … but with Spanish film you never know.