The Good Boss
Javier Bardem lords it over a corporate satire which won a fistful of Spanish Oscars, including gongs for best film, best director and best actor.
The Spanish director Fernando León de Aranoa is also the writer here but, even so, it is his inability to find the right way in which to pitch the story that fatally lets the film down. Back in 2005, a belated release was given in Britain to his acclaimed feature Mondays in the Sun, made in 2002. Like that work, The Good Boss stars Javier Bardem and in both cases the title is, in fact, ironic (Mondays in the Sun may have sounded like a study of the leisured classes but was actually about men mainly unemployed and struggling to survive). The boss in this new film, Julio Blanco, the owner of a factory manufacturing industrial scales, may present himself as a good boss who cares for his employees but, given Bardem’s fame for roles such as that of the villain in No Country for Old Men (2007), it is no surprise when the film reveals him to be a ruthless manipulator. Early on we learn that his business has been shortlisted together with two others for a top award and that an inspection will follow to decide the winner. It's a situation in which Blanco will stop at nothing to ensure that his set-up will come out on top.
Such a story could be presented as a drama and, indeed, The Good Boss begins with a short scene of racial violence. Ultimately that episode will turn out to have a relevance to how the plot unfolds, but at the outset it feels like a wrong note in the face of what follows. The tone of the music score quickly confirms that the film is in some sense comic, but what kind of comedy is it exactly? The Good Boss has been described by some as a satire but it doesn't feel pointed enough for that. But it's not a black comedy either since we are never invited to relish Blanco as a man we love to hate and his dismissal of an employee with children to support, José (Óscar de la Fuente), invites sympathy for his victim better suited to the drama that has been sidestepped. True, there is one effective comic character in the shape of Román (Fernando Albizu), a security guard whose sympathies are all with José when he sets up a protest on the land opposite the main gate of the business (that Román delights in rhymes that point up José’s slogans attacking Blanco adds to the characterisation).
We also meet a range of additional people who become involved in the various games going on, be they those planned by Blanco or ones that wrong-foot him. The turn by Almudena Amor as a young intern who takes Blanco’s eye (he’s not a faithful husband) eventually works well, but it seems bizarrely at odds with Blanco’s ruthlessness that he should for so long defend his production manager, a childhood friend called Miralles (Manolo Solo), whose work is inept. As the story unfolds over a week or so, we follow it in daily segments but, whether one looks for humour or for something more dramatic, the screenplay never yields anything to relish. Shot in ’Scope and colour by Pau Esteve Birba, The Good Boss certainly looks fine and, with someone as assured as Bardem leading the cast, it can indeed be said that throughout he is admirably in character. But the film runs for a full two hours without ever finding an effective voice. In passing it throws in some comments on how people can be different from your first impression of them and can later be seen with fresh eyes, but that bid to be philosophical fails to give depth to a work that never seems to find its footing.
Original title: El buen patrón.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Javier Bardem, Manolo Solo, Almudena Amor, Óscar de la Fuente, Sonia Almarcha, Fernando Albizu, Tarik Rmili, Celso Bugallo, Rafa Castejón, Martín Páez, Francesc Orella, Yaël Belicha, Nao Albet.
Dir Fernando León de Aranoa, Pro Fernando León de Aranoa, Jaume Roures and Javier Méndez, Screenplay Fernando León de Aranoa, Ph Pau Esteve Birba, Art Dir César Macarrón, Ed Vanessa Marimbert, Music Zeltia Montes, Costumes Fernando García.
Básculas Blanco/Crea SGR/MK2 Films/Orange/Reposado PC/Mediapro-Curzon.
115 mins. Spain. 2021. UK Rel: 15 July 2022. Cert. 15.