Fan Review: Javier Bardem is turning a scary role | Cannes Film Festival

Javier Bardem presents his most terrifying performance since No Country For Old Men in this new film about torture from Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen, who is set in the rural countryside of 2023. Animals.

It’s a film about shooting a movie – often a moment of chance or emotion or the rapture of the magical magic of cinema. Not now. And given this by Paweł Pawlikowski DadThis year could be the Cannes of father-daughter dysfunction.

Bardem plays Esteban, a film director and winner of the Oscar and Cannes Palme: a charming and worldly man who, in the most disturbing ways in the film, reveals himself to be in the middle of a crisis.

He is married with two children but has chosen to be with his eldest daughter from a previous relationship, after years of estrangement: the son of the star of his first movie who (intentionally) stopped acting after that.

This is Emilia, cleverly and intelligently played by Victoria Luengo, who is also an actress. Esteban arranges a lunch to give Emilia a lead in his new 1930s film about the Spanish conquest of western Sahara.

Sorogoyen, Bardem and Luengo show us how difficult this meeting is: Esteban does not drink these days, but Emilia orders beer and red wine. Esteban bluntly assures her that there is nothing to do with the job and wonders if they can go to the movies together like they used to when they were younger. Emilia immediately kills her happiness by angrily reminding her father about their trip to see Kill Bill: Volume 2 when she was 12 and he showed up drunk and high and created an incident that changed the rest of their lives.

Furious, Esteban says he did not remember and misinterpreted this event; His lighting does not prevent work, although he warns that he can be “tough” on him during filming. The story is designed to show real brutality, very different from what his project claims is a strong criticism of colonial powers.

Esteban is coercive and controlling, the most dangerous qualities to coexist with his noble charm: he has a silent anger and is angry at the way Emilia chooses to hang out with other members (but not him) after filming for a day. He lovingly offers her advice, including finger-wagging advice to stop drinking, which Emilia angrily rejects as intolerable deception, leading Esteban to treat her as an ungrateful person.

And this toxic atmosphere culminates in a subtle sequence in which Esteban has violent outbursts due to the actors’ inability to control certain events, despite the fact that they were caught up in the burning sun.

It is a fierce rejection of everything about filmmaking and a quiet psychological study of the painful story of a father and his daughter. Has Emilia accepted this responsibility, despite her obvious reluctance, just to face her father once, to force him to a mental crisis where he can admit his guilt for his actions?

Maybe. But the film asks you to consider the possibility: that Esteban made this whole film to conquer his daughter, to praise her, to submit to her, to forgive her, even to forget how he treated Emilia and her mother.

It’s a dangerous idea, delivered with passion Javier Bardem and Emilia Luengo: two great actresses.