Biutiful is Alejandro González Iñárritu‘s newest film, starring Javier Bardem, Maricel Álvarez, Hanaa Bouchaib and Guillermo Estrella.

Plot:
Uxbal (Javier Bardem) is a small time gangster, barely scraping by with what he can earn from acting as a broker between (illegal) street vendors (mostly from Africa originally) and the (illegal) Chinese immigrants who produce the fakes that are sold. Then Uxbal is diagnosed with prostate cancer and knows that he only has a short time to get his life in enough of an order that at least his kids (Hanaa Bouchaib and Guillermo Estrella) are taken care of since their mother Marambra (Maricel Álvarez) suffers from bipolar disorder and it’s quite unlikely that she can be relied on.

Biutiful is a heavy, difficult and very excellent film, arguably the best Iñárritu and Bardem both have made so far. It’s beautifully [no pun intended] crafted, in all aspects and very gripping. In short, awesome.

Iñárritu’s direction is relentless. It doesn’t let you get away, but more importantly, it doesn’t let Javier Bardem get off easy, either. The camera is practically the whole time on him, and most of the time directly on his face. In a close-up. At least that’s the way it feels. In any case, it must have been hell to shoot for Bardem and a lesser actor would have failed miserably.

But also the rest of the cast was really good and especially Maricel Álvarez was amazing. She deserves all kinds of accolades for portraying the bipolar Marambra. It felt completely real and if you told me that Álvarez actually suffered from bipolar disorder herself, I would have no problem believing you.

There are some horror elements to the story, which I didn’t expect but which fit the tone of the story very well. [Magical realism done right.] It’s just quite a shock when you see them the first time and you didn’t know they would be there (even though they’re even in the trailer. I don’t know how I missed it).

The story is generally very well done. I cried my eyes out (how could it be any different?), got goosebumps and I really felt pulled into this world.

What else can I say? Iñárritu is a very talented director and he teams up with a wonderful cinematographer (Rodrigo Priet0) and it’s all spot-on.

Summarising: Must see.