Review: 'Biutiful'

`Biutiful" revels in complexity and contradiction. That's typical of a movie directed by Mexican-born Alejandro González Iñárritu, who's known for such multi-character studies as `Babel' and `Amores Perros.'

In the case of `Biutiful,' however, the complexity centers on only one man - Uxbal, hauntingly played by Javier Bardem.

Uxbal, who's trying to raise two young children on his own, tries to be a fixer for immigrants in the multicultural El Raval neighborhood of Barcelona. But Uxbal is an outsider himself, a transplant from another region of Spain under a program pursued by former leader Francisco Franco to disrupt the Catalan culture of Barcelona.

Uxbal loves his two children, but he snaps at them when they make childish mistakes. He wants to be a good father, but he has no role model because he never knew his own father, who fled under Franco's rule and died overseas.

He loves his estranged, bipolar wife, Marambra (Maricel Álvarez), but he can't tolerate her periods of mania.

He helps the African immigrants who sell counterfeit goods on the street, but he fails to keep some of them from being deported when they're caught.

He arranges for Chinese immigrants to get construction jobs, but he makes all kinds of mistakes in trying to help them.

He has incredible empathy for the dead and visits funeral homes to hear their thoughts. But he uses this gift for his own profit, making relatives pay to know what the spirits are thinking.

And despite being full of life, Uxbal learns in the opening scenes that he has terminal cancer. The rest of the movie plays out as Uxbal prepares for his death.

Bardem appears in nearly every scene of "Biutiful," and he manages to sustain the required emotional intensity of the role without falling into melodramatics. He won the best actor award for "Biutiful" at last year's Cannes Film Festival, and he was nominated on Tuesday for the best actor Oscar.

"Biutiful" also is a favorite to win the foreign-language Oscar, for which it's nominated.

But "Biutiful" is a haunting, painful tragedy. It's a lot like life, of course, full of emotional ups and downs, of good intentions gone awry.

And like the best movies, it's a beautiful failure as it tries desperately to capture meaning in a world of loss.

González Iñárritu has said he was inspired to write the script for "Biutiful" while driving with his children in 2006 and listening to the Ravel Piano Concerto in G Major. The melancholic music made his children start to cry, and they couldn't tell him why.

For González Iñárritu, "Biutiful" is his attempt to explain.

"Biutiful"

Our grade: A-