{"id":965703,"date":"2026-05-17T02:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T02:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/965703\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T02:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T02:06:15","slug":"the-beloved-review-javier-bardem-stuns-as-a-director-on-the-verge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/965703\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Beloved\u2019 Review: Javier Bardem Stuns As A Director On The Verge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSpain\u2019s Rodrigo Sorogoyen<\/a> has proven himself a master of the psychological thriller, whether the serial-killer kind (May God Save Us, 2016) the political kind (The Realm, 2018) or the true-crime kind (The Beasts, 2023). The Beloved, his first film in Competition at Cannes<\/a>, is an incredible achievement that builds on all those films and leaves them standing in the dust, hitting all the same tense throat-clenching beats but somehow transcending genre altogether. Javier Bardem<\/a>\u2019s career has been building up to this stunning moment, and his character, Esteban Martinez, makes the self-centered film director of Joachim Trier\u2019s Sentimental Value look like Walt Disney by comparison.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first 20 minutes alone are a masterclass; Esteban takes his seat in a fancy restaurant and orders sparkling water with ice and lemon. Right there, you have his character; Esteban is a recovering alcoholic driven to self-destruction by his volatile temperament and exacting needs as a film director. But we don\u2019t know this yet; it is about to be teased out by the woman he is dining with, someone he hasn\u2019t seen for 13 years and clearly feels bad about leaving. She could be his mistress, since he talks of leaving Spain and starting a new life in New York. She is, however, his daughter; Esteban is a feared and lauded film director who wants to cast her in his latest project, a period drama set in the western Sahara desert.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is how we meet Emilia Vera (Victoria Luengo<\/a>), the product of an affair with one of Esteban\u2019s leading ladies, and a strikingly mysterious actress who looks so much like an Almod\u00f3var starlet that it should come as no surprise to learn she already is one. The scene is one of two extended moments that encapsulate the film in two very different movements, and as an opening salvo it is an impressive and almost unbearably awkward back and forth that only becomes more uncomfortable as it goes on \u2014 the camera pushes in close and closer as the gloves start to come off, and Emilia lets rip about the time her druggy, violent, estranged father once showed her up at a screening of Kill Bill 2.<\/p>\n

\n\tNevertheless, Emilia listens to Esteban\u2019s apparently sincere compliments, about the crummy TV show she\u2019s too good for, joining the all-star international cast in Fuerteventura where she is immediately feels out of her depth. Her first scene, a complicated tracking shot, is ruined when she mistimes her delivery, but Esteban \u2014 surprisingly \u2014 lets her off the hook, blaming a technical issue and giving her leeway to improvise. The other actors can\u2019t help but quiz her on her famous father, winner of a Best Foreign Film Oscar, while the press ask Esteban much more cynical questions about his reasons for casting her in the first place.<\/p>\n

\n\tEsteban\u2019s motivation, like the real meaning of the title itself (\u201cThe Loved One\u201d in Spanish), is opaque, and unlike many of Sorogoyen\u2019s previous films \u2014 which would be nothing without a hefty chunk of moral ambiguity \u2014 there is very little in the way of closure. If Esteban wants to do right by Emilia, he\u2019s not very good at that, giving her a self-righteous mini lecture about her incipient alcoholism (\u201cDrinking is f*cking shit,\u201d he thunders). It seems more likely that Esteban wants to exert some kind of control over her, which comes out in the second major sequence, a Kubrickian scene of behind-the-camera peacockery that sees Esteban finally lose his cool, revealing frightening wells of anger that cause the female cinematographer to pack up and go, costing the film two days of shooting.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmazingly, it is not Emilia that leaves, and the film invites us to ponder on that. It also feeds us questions about the paradox of filmmaking, in which relationships are so often destroyed in the process of creation \u2014 Esteban wants truth and authenticity every time, and yet he is constantly retconning his past, pushing away his daughter when she pushes back on his version of their history. By the end there is a clear feeling that Esteban\u2019s art is his real beloved, and Sorogoyen gives us a sense of that with his use of screen ratios and film stock, from classic black-and-white to shimmering color and grainy video-assist: Esteban always has the scene in his head (and Sorogoyen\u2019s Godardian use of score underlines that).<\/p>\n

\n\tCertainly one of the best films about filmmaking since Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut\u2019s Day for Night, The Beloved may be the scariest since Peeping Tom. Unwittingly, Esteban makes this observation himself when he quotes Ingmar Bergman\u2019s muse Liv Ullmann in defense of his perfectionist, naturalist style: \u201cThe closer the camera, the more the mask must slip,\u201d he tells Emilia. Which is great advice from one actor to another, but closer to a Death Row confession coming from a director.<\/p>\n

\n\tTitle:<\/strong> The Beloved
Festival:<\/strong> Cannes (Competition)
Director\/screenwriter:<\/strong> Rodrigo Sorogoyen
Cast:<\/strong> Javier Bardem, Victoria Luengo, Melina Matthews, Marina Fois, Malena Villa
Sales:<\/strong> Goodfellas
Running time:<\/strong> 2 hrs 15 mins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain\u2019s Rodrigo Sorogoyen has proven himself a master of the psychological thriller, whether the serial-killer kind (May God…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":965704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[5839,6639,77,85170,3943,6080,267328,16,15,269649],"class_list":{"0":"post-965703","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-cannes","9":"tag-cannes-film-festival","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-javier-bardem","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-review","14":"tag-rodrigo-sorogoyen","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-victoria-luengo"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116587474886803249","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=965703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/965704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=965703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=965703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=965703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}