The owner of a scale factory intervenes in the lives of his employees to receive an award in this award-winning Spanish film from director Fernando León de Aranoa.
A scale proves to be a rich and apt metaphor for keeping a business going in the slyly engaging workplace comedy "The Good Boss," which was the big winner at Spain's equivalent of the Oscars last winter.
Set in a scale factory, the film adopts balance as its theme and watchword. Such respect for subtlety tends to beg at the Academy Awards, but it garnered a record 20 nominations at Spain's Goya Awards and won six awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Javier Bardem, and Best Director and Screenplay for the writer. and director Fernando León de Aranoa. .
Director: Fernando León de Aranoa
Writer: Fernando León de Aranoa
Stars: Javier Bardem, Manolo Solo, Almudena Amor
“The Good Boss” depicts a hectic week in the life of Julio Blanco (Mr. Bardem, proving that he can be remarkable even when playing someone ordinary), the wealthy and self-satisfied owner of a scale manufacturer who intends to impress a committee. of judges he plans to visit at any time in the course of selecting the winner of a regional government award for business excellence. At the entrance to the site, an old scale placed as a proud display of the factory's history is slightly off center and symbolizes everything that is about to go wrong. That a bird continues defecating on him hints that things will get complicated.
In Bardem's amusing portrayal, Blanco comes across as a bit smug and entitled (he inherited the company from his father), but also more or less sympathetic. Organizations need leaders, and there is no doubt that he leads. He tells the employees that he thinks of the company as a family with himself at the helm. Accordingly, he balances understanding with discipline.
Blanco's challenges are many: A disgruntled ex-employee (Óscar de la Fuente) sets up camp on public land across the street to launch a profane and raucous daily protest of one man, a valued manager (Manolo Solo). he keeps making costly mistakes because he's distracted by marital difficulties, and a pretty young intern (Almudena Amor) absorbs his attention. Still, she has a spot reserved on her wall of honor for the plaque she hopes to win from the governing committee, and nothing will stop her from adding one more reminder of his success to his gallery of self-congratulations.
Balancing satire and realism, the writer-director lets the audience decide how to think about Blanco. His factory seems to be running very well and although he is clearly a flawed man, he makes a sincere effort to get to know his employees and understand their individual problems. Rather than fire his bumbling manager, Miralles, he invites him to a quiet dinner, reminisces about their childhood together (Miralles's father worked for Blanco's father), and convinces him to share the details of their relationship troubles in a book. effort to help. Blanco even talks to Miralles's wife (Mara Guil). This is a full service boss.
Blanco has a selfish purpose, he really wants to win that award, and he's a womanizer, but he's also trying his best to get everyone to work together while the universe seems to conspire to tear everything apart. Anyone who has ever tried to manage a large group (and maybe even a not-so-large group) will sigh as they recognize the way problems seem to meet and conspire together. Even a saint would quickly find himself hitting the nearest wall for the way human flaws have a way of disrupting even the best managed systems. Lurking in the background, ethnic tensions between native Spanish and Arabs provide another source of confusion that no amount of business management experience can cure. A ragged old employee (Celso Bugallo) who finds himself at the intersection of several of these forces is named Fortuna. Luck, the director suggests, plays a bigger role in business success than the average executive would like to admit.
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