THE BELOVED is an absolutely majestic character drama that focusses on a brutal father-daughter relationship. Script, performances, cinematography, editing, sound, cinema-history meta-text - I wouldn't change a single-frame of this masterpiece. It's like the already brilliant SENTIMENTAL VALUE's more accomplished, more searing, more brutal big brother.
Javier Bardem gives a complex performance as a celebrated film director called Esteban, who has recovered from his wild and reckless youth and seeks to reconnect with his estranged adult daughter Emilia. In a brutal central scene the audience is taken from farcical laughter to one of the most painful, sadistic, nasty scenes of attempted control and psychological brutalisation I have seen in quite some time. Esteban is a man who thinks he has reckoned with his past, but has not. He may be sober, but he is still the guy whose behaviour can hurt and damage. The only difference is that now he is faced with women - whether his daughter or his cinematographer - who won't put up with his bullshit.
As good as Bardem is, this film is the vehicle for Victoria Luengo as Emilia. The part was written for her, and she occupies nearly every frame of this film with a powerful and desperately moving performance as Esteban's long-abandoned child. They dance a dance of seeing but not seeing - of trying to connect and rebuffing that connection. You sense that Emilia, closely observed by Esteban whether in real life or through his camera lens, wants to REALLY be seen by him. But he spends most of the film just creating his own narrative, and directing his own back story, and refusing to centre her pain. It's a remarkable double act and one gets the feeling that this is one of those performances - like Vicky Krieps in THE PHANTOM THREAD or Sandra Hueller in TONI ERDMANN - that makes an international star out of a European, hitherto domestically known, talent.
So kudos to writer-director Rodrigo Sorogoyen and longtime writing partner Isabel Pena for creating such a brave and complex script and to Sorogoyen for setting them within some of the most intentional and clever cinematography I have seen in a while. There are so many nods to Hitchcock, Bergman and Almodovar and a feeling of complete mastery of the form.
THE BELOVED has a running time of 2hr 15 mins. It played Cannes and Toronto.
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