Ever the narcissist, Blanco craves the adulation and he even has a trophy wall, which the film routinely cuts back to, highlighting the empty space that he has already prepared. Aside from the recognition, winning would also secure some much-needed subsidies. So the irony in the movie's title is pretty glaring.īlanco's company is one of three finalists for a prestigious industry award, which he desperately wants to win. Or the string of young female interns who Blanco is quick to bring onboard and even quicker to replace once he has had his way with them. Take Jose (Oscar de la Fuente), a disgruntled former employee (and perpetual thorn in Blanco's side) who sets up camp on a splotch of public land near the factory's main entrance to protest being laid off. Some see through his fatherly ruse and have learned how to manage it. In reality, Blanco uses his "One Big Family" spiel as a tool to manipulate and control his workforce. Instead, Blanco claims his employees as his "children" to the point of frequently involving himself in their personal lives. Along with his wife, Adela (a really good Sonia Almarcha), who runs her own fashion boutique, the two are a working couple who never had children. It's a midsize company he inherited from his father that makes and sells weight scales of every shape and size (the richness of that reoccurring metaphor is impossible to miss). The story revolves around Julio Blanco (Bardem), the titular head of Blanco Scales. Not easy for a movie with this many moving parts. Most importantly, the story maintains a remarkably tight cohesion throughout. It's nicely paced it has a near perfect balance of storytelling and character development and the subtle shots of humor often come from the most hilariously unexpected places. But de Aranoa has such a firm and confident control of the material. With its many side characters and smorgasbord of sub-plots, there are so many ways this could have turned messy. While Bardem is undeniably magnetic, just as key to the movie's success is de Aranoa's cracking script. It's some of the 53-year-old Oscar winner's best work.
With its North American release, more people now get to see the performance Bardem should have been nominated for at the most recent Academy Awards (sorry "Being the Ricardos"). It's a dark workplace comedy with a subtle edge one driven by a tour de force performance from Javier Bardem, whose smooth-talking charisma-rich presence turns megalomania, duplicity, and self-serving passive-aggression into a captivating image you can't turn away from.Įarlier this year, "The Good Boss" earned a staggering 20 nominations at Spain's Goya Awards, eventually winning six statues including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Original Screenplay. Writer-director Fernando Leon de Aranoa's biting anti-corporate satire "The Good Boss" is the kind of movie that can have you snickering one minute and squirming the next.
0 kommentar(er)
