Biutiful Review

• 17th May 2011

Biutiful is not a pretty film, but it is a good one. With Alejandro González Iñárritu in the director’s chair and starring Javier Bardem you know you’re getting a quality film. Iñárritu delves further into the darkness of the soul than even the likes of Ingmar Bergman or Michael Haneke. Hailing from Mexico, this is his first film made in Spain and isn’t set in the sun baked, art deco Barcelona, but instead focuses on characters living on the margins of society in squalid conditions.

Biutiful centres around Uxbal, a middle-aged single father of two young children, who makes ends meet through a variety of illegal sources including managing networks of illegal immigrants. He only makes a meagre amount of money and lives in squalid conditions. The film opens with him discovering that he has prostate cancer and has only a few months to live. In a state of shock and reflection he moves back in with his trashy, bi-polar ex-wife and mother of his children (who’s having an affair with Uxbal’s brother). A series of terrible incidents follows; African street traders he’s been helping are busted by the police, he loses a friend and a source of revenue and, even more tragically, a group of Chinese illegal immigrants, including women and children and the babysitter to his own kids, are poisoned by some cheap gas cylinders and killed in their sleep.

Uxbal is a complex character. He’s not the terrible person or manipulator that his living would suggest. He’s become a victim of circumstance and is still able to recognise right from wrong. In his own way he thinks he’s doing right which makes the death of the Chinese all the more tragic. But the heart of this film is Uxbal’s terrible disintegration as the cancer eats away at him – made worse by the the awful reality that there doesn’t appear to be anyone who’ll look after his children (least of all their mother).

Bardem is particularly impressive in this film. He’s barely off the screen and gives arguably one of his best performances. His screen presence is always immense and here he’s not afraid to show himself as a man old before his time. Despite the bleakness of the film, it’s beautifully shot by Rodrigo Prieto in rather striking, if at times sickly, colours. The overall mood of the film is pretty depressing and has little humour, but the viewer is kept engaged throughout its lengthy running time of two hours and 20 minutes, as it first focuses on Uxbal’s illness and then swings to further tragic proportions with the death of the Chinese immigrants. It hasn’t had the distribution or buzz about it, unlike the director’s previous films, but is a film that deserves credit and, like all his films, would benefit from a wider audience.

Chris Hick