LFF: Biutiful – 4*
Javier Bardem receiving a Best Actor Oscar nod for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s haunting Biutiful, after his Cannes Film Festival Best Actor triumph was hardly a great revelation to most. The haunting film in true woeful Iñárritu style, and one set for the first time in his native Spain, is a definite awards contender by any stretch of the imagination, featuring a career-defining moment for Bardem to play to his strengths.
Incredibly moving and all consuming, Biutful is a bold and courageous take on the shadier side of Barcelona living, minus all the glamorous prestige that the European city usually gets. Although a centred around one defiant character with the world on his shoulders, it provides a backstreet guide to a living and breathing, barebones existence that even though shot in a washed out manner, injects a vibrancy of colour through its multinational inhabitants. Troublesome events play out in some of the harshest urban living environments, but Iñárritu manages to illustrate its own kind of ‘biutiful’ allure.
Part of that awakening is having the reliable and charismatic presence of Bardem in the lead as our complex, anti-hero Uxbal. Uxbal juggles many roles as a father, an ex-partner, a medium and an underworld profiteer. No clear lines are drawn; Uxbal is a scintillating combination of survivour, inspirer and protector who values life, where life still flourishes. Even in the ugliest of places and situations, Uxbal seems virtuous, even though his dealings are less than kosher, knowing right from wrong and the importance of family, which is very much evident and the main theme throughout.
Uxbal is a contradiction, knowingly encouraging life-threatening criminal endeavours, but still very much human, caring for his children, his bi-polar ex-wife, various Chinese and African illegal immigrants and illegal street merchants, putting them before him, even as he fights a personal battle against cancer. That said Bardem never allows Uxbal to become too contrived, simply playing him with wilful dignity, as he navigates his way through uncertainty in the last few months of his life.
The only sure factor Uxbal has is that of his death, and in a film that deals with the subject on may levels it could become a somber affair not for the faint-hearted. However, Iñárritu’s Biutiful is very much about life and its positives, which Uxbal helps highlight along the way, continually educating others, and making for an intelligent and truly inspiring protagonist.
With Bardem’s Oscar nod and his international appeal, Biutiful will attract keen interest as it is a pure Bardem performance vehicle. Bardem does compassion and torment in layers of subtly like no other international actor, and it is enthralling to see these characteristics applied in a story set in the most austere of surroundings, rather than the usual flighty love affair we are used to seeing him occupy.
4/5 stars
By @FilmGazer
