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Cinema Interviews Podcast

Interview: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu on Biutiful

In the latest drama from director Alejandro González Iñárritu, an underworld fixer in Barcelona struggles to deal with his family’s future and his own mortality.

Uxbal (Javier Bardem) oversees an illegal underground operation involving immigrant workers, drugs and construction, whilst also trying to be a good man to his estranged wife (Maricel Álvarez) and his two children (Hanaa Bouchaib and Guillermo Estrella).

Notable for an outstanding lead performance from Bardem, the film powerfully explores the dark edges of a modern city and the lives of those who live in it.

It marks a break from Iñárritu’s triptych with screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel) and I recently spoke with the director in London about his latest work.

You can listen to the interview here:

[audio:http://filmdetail.receptionmedia.com/Alejandro_Gonzalez_Inarritu_on_Biutiful.mp3]

You can also download this interview as a podcast via iTunes by clicking here.

N.B. The title of the film refers to the orthographical spelling in Spanish of the English word beautiful as it would sound to native Spanish speakers.

Biutiful opens in the UK on Friday 28th January and is already in limited release in the US

> Download this interview as an MP3 file
> Official site
> LFF review of Biutiful
> Reviews of Biutiful at Metacritic
> Alejandro González Iñárritu at the IMDb

Categories
Cinema Festivals London Film Festival

LFF 2010: Biutiful

A powerful depiction of life on the edges of a modern city, the latest film from Alejandro González Iñárritu is a full on experience featuring a dazzling central performance by Javier Bardem.

Marking a break from his triptych of films with screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, Biutiful is the more linear tale of Uxbal (Bardem), a father struggling in the slums of contemporary Barcelona.

A fixer of sorts for illegal immigrant labour in the city, he sets up jobs, smoothes over ‘relations’ with the local police and deals with various figures involved in this hidden economy, including his brother Tito (Eduard Fernandez) and business partner Hai (Taisheng Cheng).

He is also a devoted father to his children, Ana (Hanaa Bouchaib) and Mateo (Guillermo Estrella), and in addition to caring for them, struggles to cope with his bipolar ex-wife, Marambra (Maricel Alvarez) and an immigrant Senegalese woman (Diaryatou Daff) he feels responsible for.

There is more to the story and clocking in at 138 minutes, Iñárritu doesn’t hold back in showing us a kaleidoscope of problems as Uxbal deals with health issues, emotional anxieties and a deep sense of his own mortality.

The film’s grim milieu is expertly realised and, to its great credit, doesn’t shy away from showing the stark reality of a modern metropolis built on cheap labour and the suffering of the poor.

Rodrigo Prieto’s handheld camerawork captures the exterior and interior worlds of Barcelona with remarkable authenticity, and there are shifts in aspect ratio and camera speeds which add to the rich visual architecture of the film.

Stephen Mirrione’s editing is another standout element, stitching the action together with considerable skill – one sequence involving the police chasing an immigrant gang is a masterclass in construction and pacing.

The sound design by Martin Hernandez is also highly effective, used to accentuate the reality of Uxbal’s world but also employing unconventional effects to take us inside his mind.

After the globetrotting nature of Babel, Innaritu seems to have become more interested in a single place and a central, unifying character who acts as a nexus for the themes and events of the story.

Uxbal is an intriguing protagonist of considerable contradictions: he uses people, whilst also helping them; is angry but loving with those closest to him; and appears to be both resigned to and in denial about his ultimate fate.

The character is brought vividly to life by an incredible central performance by Javier Bardem: in addition to his magnetic screen presence, he convinces as a shady, underworld operator but also conveys his interior emotions with remarkable grace and authenticity.

It is one of the most affecting portrayals of fatherhood I can remember seeing on screen: the chemistry with his children is touchingly real and the emotional latter stages are almost hard to watch.

But whilst Bardem dominates the film, other actors also leave their mark: as Uxbal’s ex-wife, Alvarez convincingly alternates between her moods; and as their children Bouchaib and Estrella display a realism and maturity rare amongst young actors.

Iñárritu is a director who likes to deal with big themes on a wide canvas, which can run the risk of seeming grandiose or self-important.

But Biutiful – the title comes from a misspelling within the story – is admirable precisely because it tackles huge subjects with an unusual intensity and a refreshing lack of distance or irony.

Although he seems to be returning to similar themes in his films – love, death, existence – Iñárritu has considerable skills as a filmmaker and uses his full armoury to open these subjects up for the audience to process.

Not everything works – a diversion into the supernatural is perhaps a step too far – but the barrage of elements presented is wildly ambitious and admirable for its naked, emotional quality.

In exploring life in a modern city through one character he manages to find something universal in the particulars of a man’s life and it ends up being more than just a supercharged retelling of the Book of Job.

Biutiful is not a film that will please everyone or reach a massive audience, but it features one of the great modern screen performances and in exploring the rawness of existence, reaches a level of transcendence rare in modern cinema.

> Biutiful at the LFF
> Reviews from Cannes and TIFF at MUBi
> IMDb entry

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DVD & Blu-ray

Blu-ray: Amores Perros

Three stories converge through a car crash in this brilliantly executed drama set in Mexico City.

Amores Perros (2000) was the debut feature of director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, set the template for their subsequent collaborations – 21 Grams (2003) and Babel (2006) – by exploring intense human behaviour through a non-linear narrative.

The first section sees Octavio (Gael García Bernal) try to arrange a dog fight so he can run away with his girlfriend Susana (Vanessa Bauche).

The next show Daniel (Álvaro Guerrero), a wealthy publisher, move in with his housebound younger lover Valeria (Goya Toledo), who sees her pet dog get lost under the floorboards of their apartment.

The final segment features El Chivo (Emilio Echeverria), an older homeless man trying to contact his daughter, whom he hasn’t seen in years.

A startling feature debut for Inarritu, it deservedly reaped a lot of critical aacclaim on its release in 2000 and ended up with an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film.

The dark exploration of human and animal behaviour is a riveting watch, with fine performances from the ensemble cast – even the dogs are great.

The graphic dog fights disturbed some viewers, who suspected they were done for real, but a short featurette explains how they achieved these sequences without harming any animals.

When it was first released, some pointed out the narrative similarities to Pulp Fiction (1994), but Innaritu stamps the material with his own style and energy, creating a searing examination of life at the margins of a city.

In some ways it is still his most vital and stylish film, which marked the arrival of a major cinematic talent.

The extra features are:

  • Additional scenes (Commentary by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu & Guillermo Arriaga)©
  • Behind the Scenes – “a making of…” featurette
  • 3 music videos (2 directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
  • Theatrical trailer
  • Campaign development

Amores Perros is out from Optimum on Monday 18th October

> Buy the Blu-ray or DVD from Amazon UK
> Amores Perros at the IMDb

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Interesting News

Write the Future

Nike have released this epic three-minute advert for the World Cup named ‘Write the Future‘, which stars Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba, Wayne Rooney, Fabio Cannavaro, Franck Ribery, Andres Iniesta, Cesc Fabregas, Theo Walcott, Patrice Evra, Gerard Pique, Ronaldinho, Landon Donovan, Tim Howard and Thiago Silva.

Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu (21 Grams, Babel), it also features Roger Federer, Kobe Bryant and Homer Simpson and will be shown on TV for the first time tonight (May 22nd) during the Champions League Final between Bayern Munich and Inter.

Categories
Interesting The Daily Video

The Daily Video: Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandro González Iñárritu & Guillermo Del Toro

Charlie Rose hosted a very interesting roundtable discussion in 2006 with Mexican directors Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo Del Toro.

They discussed their respective films from that year (Children of Men, Babel and Pan’s Labyrinth) as well as their careers and friendships.