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MovieMail's Review
Bardem gives a career-best performance in director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s fourth feature, which confirms his status as a leading talent of world cinema, says Alex Davidson.
Javier Bardem won the Best Actor award at Cannes (and received an Oscar nomination) for his career-best performance in Biutiful. He stars as Uxbal, a father of two young children who ekes out a living dabbling in the criminal underworld of Barcelona. He finds work for a number of illegal immigrants, taking a handsome cut from their wages. He is also blessed/cursed with second sight, seeing recently deceased people and occasionally helping them before they pass to the afterlife. Then his life changes when he finds out he has prostate cancer, and has only two months to live.
This is the first Spanish-language film from Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu since his knockout debut Amores Perros. Although Biutiful returns to some of his favourite themes - human fallibility, death and the search for redemption - the filmmaker focuses on one character rather than a large ensemble cast (as in Amores Perros and Babel). Bardem is present on screen throughout almost all of Biutiful, and delivers a hugely compelling portrait of a deeply flawed man. Half-way through the film, a horrific tragedy occurs, and Uxbal’s actions could make him irredeemable in the eyes of the audience with a lesser actor, yet Bardem’s brilliance retains our sympathy for the antihero. Realising that he needs to provide for his children, Uxbal attepts to reunite with his estranged wife, a bi-polar alcoholic played by Maricel Álvarez in an incendiary performance. Like Uxbal, she is a damaged, potentially dangerous character, yet Álvarez, too, shows the complexities of
this often wretched woman, even as she mistreats her young son.
The closing moments of Biutiful are unforgettable. Mirroring and explaining the lyrical yet disorientating opening sequence, the final encounter in a snowy forest is very moving, and reminiscent of Kurosawa’s Ikiru - this scene, in particular, shows how far Iñárritu has come in just four features. His audacious passages of magical realism show he has lost none of his daring, yet the attention to character demonstrates his maturity. Most reviews have focused on Bardem’s remarkable performance, yet Biutiful also confirms Iñárritu’s status as one of the leading talents of world cinema.
A drama written and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Biutiful portrays a father's love for his children amidst a life of poverty and crime in Barcelona.
Javier Bardem stars as Uxbal, a black market trader, psychic medium and single father of two who learns that he has terminal cancer. Amid the grimy, lawless backstreets of the city, Uxbal battles the odds to find some kind of redemption and make arrangements for his two children and his estranged and unstable wife after his death.
