Cinefile

Here is that rare case when I give a near perfect star rating to a performance in a film--and not the film itself. On paper, the storyline for Alejandro González Iñárritu's Biutiful is beyond ludicrous and sometimes begs for ridicule. It's not that any of the incidents that occur in the film aren't reasonable; in fact they would be, if they were spread out over an eight-part HBO mini-series. But in two and half hours, Iñárritu manages to cram in cancer, slave labor, drug selling, immigration laws, telepathy, the afterlife, corrupt policemen, infidelity, family growing pains and a few other topic tentpoles, all while trying to weave together a thematic tapestry that aims to make it "all matter." The real draw, of course, is star Javier Bardem. As the epicenter in this universe of dire circumstances, Bardem's Uxbal is a dying man who aims to settle his debts--both emotional and fiscal. From the get-go it's clear that Uxbal is an underworld peddler and frontman in Barcelona, Spain. Some of his operations include lining up work for a basement full of Chinese immigrants, providing logistics for knock-off vendors and also communicating with the dead for desperate families in need of closure. I know: there is a lot of shit going on here.

The apex of Uxbal's personal problems comes when he is diagnosed with cancer and is subtly given a two month expiration date from his doctor. For any street-dwelling crook, the news is bad but for Uxbal--who is a single father with two children--the news is almost immediately fatal. Iñárritu shows some introspective range in the domestic scenes between Uxbal and his daughter Ana (Hanaa Bouchaib) and son Mateo (Guillermo Estrella) that was largely absent in his magnum opus Babel. It's a delicate father-children relationship because the mother is episodically involved; a bipolar mess, Marambra (Maricel Alvarez) turns in a memorable and sometimes heartbreaking supporting turn as a woman who still loves Uxbal but can't seem to stop her quest to "have fun." But in a film with this much heavy handed dread, there has to be something to look forward to right? Maybe. But don't ask Uxbal.

Still, I'm recommending the film. Biutiful lives and dies by Bardem's performance and it's a damn good one. Hell, it's the first entirely Spanish language performance to be nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. There is something special going on here. I almost feel as if Bardem saw this hodgepodge screenplay and said to himself: "It's a mess but man is there some apt opportunity for real power here." Bardem plays Uxbal by the numbers in the first act, meaning that he mopes around with the eternal look of sadness slapped on his face. Then, he begins showing signs of the volatile figure (sudden bursts of physical aggression) that must have existed at some point; I mean, how else did a man of his standing earn the respect of all these underworld figures? By the third act--after some incredibly palpable moments of intimacy with Marambra--we feel that we no longer recognize that slummer from the first reel. Here is a soulful man, a person driven by the voids in his life. Having never met his father and never really seeing eye-to-eye with his loose brother, Uxbal made a personal career of stringing together whatever opportunity came his way into something "sure." So when that first opportunity to score cash arose, I can only assume that Uxbal saw this life of underworld dealings as just another void he could maybe master.

On a technical note, Rodrigo Prieto's (Brokeback Mountain, Broken Embraces) photography is full of vibrant kinetic energy. In one sequence shot in a delirious nightclub, Prieto manages to make the audience admire the beauty in the orchestration of sounds and lights and not be distracted by the surreal body artwork on the strippers hanging from the ceiling poles. Stephen Mirrione (Traffic) doesn't so much edit as assemble a rolodex of images to sometimes intoxicating results. And then, there's Iñárritu's direction: grand in scope, unforgiving in execution. Luckily, Bardem carries us through to the end--valiantly.

Note: Don't be turned off by the title. It isn't misspelled to be pretentious or artsy or ironic. Uxbal's daughter misspells the word in one scene--and true to form the title mirrors the film: misdirected but not misunderstood.