Biutiful is a drama film directed by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu and starring Javier Bardem. It is González Iñárritu's first feature since Babel and fourth overall, and his first film in his native Spanish language since his debut feature Amores perros. The title Biutiful refers to the orthographical spelling in Spanish of the English word beautiful as it would sound to native Spanish speakers.

It was nominated for two Academy Awards in 2011 - Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actor, which it lost to In a Better World and Colin Firth for The King's Speech, respectively. Bardem's nomination makes his performance the first entirely Spanish-language performance to be nominated for that award. Bardem also received the Best Actor Award at Cannes for his work on the film.

Plot[link]

Uxbal lives in a shabby apartment in Barcelona with his two young children, Ana and Mateo. He is separated from their mother Marambra, an unreliable and reckless woman suffering from alcoholism and bipolar disorder. Having grown up an orphan, Uxbal has no family other than his brother Tito, who works in the construction business. Uxbal earns a living by organizing work of illegal immigrants, a group of Chinese producing forged goods, and a group of African street vendors selling them. He is able to talk to the dead and is sometimes paid to pass on messages from the recently deceased at wakes and funerals. When he is diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and is told to only have a few months to live, his world progressively falls apart.

Uxbal initially begins chemotherapy, but later ends the treatment at the advice of his friend and traditional healer Bea. She also gives him two black stones which she asks him to give his children before he dies. The group of Africans are brutally arrested by the police despite Uxbal's regular bribes. As his friend Ekweme faces deportation to Senegal, Uxbal offers Ekweme's wife Ige and their baby son a room in his apartment. Meanwhile, an attempt at reconciliation with Marambra fails when Uxbal realizes she cannot be trusted to raise his children. Tito brokers a deal to put the Chinese to work at a construction site. However, almost all of them die while asleep in the basement of their sweatshop due to malfunctioning gas heaters that Uxbal provided to heat their clammy sleeping quarters. An attempt by the human trafficker to dump the bodies of the Chinese into the sea fails when they are washed up on the shore shortly after, for which Uxbal is also found responsible.

As Uxbal's health continues to deteriorate, he is plagued with guilt that he is responsible for the death of the illegal immigrants. As his death draws nearer, he realizes that there will be nobody to take care of Ana and Mateo once he is gone. He entrusts the remainder of his savings to Ige, asking her to stay with the children after his death. She accepts his request, but later decides to use the money to pay for her return to Africa. However, she changes her mind at the last minute and returns to the apartment. Knowing that Ige will take care of his children, Uxbal lies down next to Ana and dies after having passed on to her a diamond ring which his father had once given to his mother. After his death, he is reunited in a snowy winter landscape with his father, who had died before Uxbal's birth shortly after having fled Spain for Mexico during the Franco regime.

Production[link]

This film took 3 and half years to make, since the beginning of the writing process. It was shot between October 2008 and February 2009 in Barcelona, Spain. It was a Mexican and Spanish co-production.

Reception[link]

Critical reception[link]

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports 64% of critics featured on the site gave a positive review of the film at an average rating of 6.4/10 based on 131 reviews. Kirk Honeycutt of the Hollywood Reporter calls the film, “a gorgeous melancholy tone poem about love, fatherhood and guilt", and describes Bardem’s performance as "...a knockout."^[1] Betsy Sharkey of the LA Times wrote, “Bardem gives a performance of staggering depth, unquestionably one of the year’s best.” ^[2] A.O. Scott from the New York Times writes, “ Mr. Iñárritu creates a feeling of raw, sprawling intimacy…every shot is full of emotional and social detail.” ^[3] Roger Ebert wrote "What drew me into the film and engaged my sympathy was the presence of Bardem...a vastly human actor." ^[4] Steve Pond of The Wrap writes Bardem’s performance is a “towering achievement”. The film has been overwhelmingly well-received in many countries including France and the UK. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian writes, “The fluency and confidence of Inarritu's cinematic language are really spectacular. It may not convert, or convince, but it is certainly arresting: not magic realism exactly, but rather the director's very own brand of magic naturalism”.

At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has so far received an average score of 58 .^[5] Some reviews criticized the story as being too bleak. Justin Chang of Variety accused Iñárritu of being "...stuck in a grim rut." ^[6]

Filmmakers Sean Penn, Werner Herzog and Michael Mann have been very outspoken in their acclaim for the film. Herzog likened it to a “poem” and Penn compared Bardem’s performance to that of Marlon Brando’s in Last Tango in Paris. Hollywood star Julia Roberts has also been very supportive.

Box office[link]

Biutiful has grossed $21,874,181 worldwide.^[7]

Awards[link]

Cast and crew at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.

The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. It premiered at Cannes on May 17, 2010,^[8] with Bardem winning for Best Actor, an award shared with Elio Germano for La Nostra Vita.^[9] On December 17, 2010, the film was named Best Foreign Language Film of 2010 at the 17th Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards.^[10][11]

On January 25, 2011, the film was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards while Javier Bardem received a nomination for Best Actor.^[12] The film is also nominated for the 64th British Academy Film Awards for Best Film not in the English Language, while Javier Bardem was nominated for Best Actor. Biutiful received eight nominations for the 25th Goya Awards; Best Actor for Javier Bardem, Best Supporting Actor for Eduard Fernández, Best Supporting Actress for Ana Wagener, Best Original Screenplay for Alejandro González Iñárritu, Armando Bó and Nicolás Giacobone, Best Cinematography for Rodrigo Prieto, Best Editing for Stephen Mirrione, Best Art Direction for Brigitte Broch and Best Original Score for Gustavo Santaolalla.

The film was also nominated at the 16th Critics' Choice Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the 68th Golden Globe Awards for Best Foreign Film, but lost to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and In a Better World, respectively.

See also[link]

• List of submissions to the 83rd Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of Mexican submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Biutiful at the Internet Movie Database
• Biutiful at AllRovi
• Biutiful at Rotten Tomatoes
• Biutiful at Box Office Mojo