The opening night of the 2022 Cheltenham International Film Festival was certainly a success. The theatre was almost full and the audience seemed to be enjoying themselves watching The Good Boss. More than the film itself, it was the actual cinema experience. I tend to avoid the big cinema chains for all the cliché reasons, noise, people talking, food, phones and 50 trailers at the start, not to mention price. At the Cheltenham Playhouse, there are no distractions, people go to focus on the film and that is what they're able to do. There was even warm applause once the credits rolled.
So about the film itself.. briefly;
The story focuses on a business owner played by Javier Bardem in an understated but very accomplished performance. The film opens with him addressing his workforce, stood on an elevated level of his Blanco Scales factory, looking down on his loyal disciples as a messiah would, although perhaps not all as loyal as he might expect. His ethos is that his company is like a family, and he extends his intimacy to all of his 'children', especially the attractive young females. Ironically, for the boss of a scales company, his affairs are about to get very imbalanced.
I have personally worked for family owned firms of a similar size to his and Bardem is very convincing as a boss of a medium sized company. He is perfectly decent on the face of it, but is smarmy, shows himself to be 2 faced depending on his audience, and has an air of caring and assured politeness-as long as things go his way. It is not miles off a good mob boss portrayal, it helps that he is a large man with an imposing presence and a very expressive face. His smile is always slightly sickly sweet, the more you see it, the less you trust it, Bardem does a lot of his work here through facial expressions.
Through arrogance that may only come through his level of age and success, the boss goes from being comfortably in charge of all he surveys, to being taken advantage of by those he has wronged, all through his own doing. I won't summarise the plot but suffice to say this is more drama than comedy, and for me, the drama is where it works best.
There are some scenes that I didn't think totally worked, including an awkward dinner between two families, and moments that have since stuck with me, like the final shot of him looking at a new award for business in his office - he should be thinking about what it has cost him and others, but he's just looking to get it hanging straight.
It was a good looking, very well made, pretty cleverly written film, overall better than I expected and very enjoyable, mostly down to the performance from one of the greatest actors Spain has ever produced.
Note: Javier Bardem does some of his other great work playing a quadriplegic man fighting for the right to end his own life in The Sea Iniside (2004), it's well worth digging out - even just for the fantasy POV shot of him flying out of his bedroom window to the sea, with Nessum Dorma playing - it is a really great moment.
The next film up for me is on Tuesday- Between Two Worlds starring one of the very greatest European actresses, Juliette Binoche.
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