The Good Boss is a Superb Comedy

 

 

 

 

The Good Boss/El bueno patrón (2021/22)

Written and Directed by Fernando Léon de Anora

Tripictures ,120 minutes, Not rated (sexual situations, drugs, language)

In Spanish with subtitles

★★★★★

 

Unless you live near an art cinema, chances are good you’ve not seen The Good Boss. You should; it shows how a comedy can be funny without being inane. Director Fernando Léon de Anora gets an excellent performance from Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men, Biutiful). This movie was nominated for over 40 awards in Spain and Europe and won 34 times!

 

Julio Blanco (Bardem) owns an industrial scale factory and fancies himself a caring boss. Every morning he smiles as he enters the factory, greets employees by name and encourages his workers to come to him with any problem. He also prone to giving motivational talks, the most recent of which was delivered from atop a cherry picker. He informs everyone that the company is a finalist for an award of excellence that would reflect well on all of them. Is Blanco a boss with a heart of gold? Where’s the fun in that? Lots of things go wrong in advance of the visiting team’s arrival. It starts with the need to scale back costs and the firing of José (Oscar de la Fuente), an accountant.

 

José begs Blanco to reconsider and claims he will lose his children. When he is nonetheless let go, José isn’t the kind of guy to go quietly. Instead, he becomes a one-man protest group with a bullhorn and a ramshackle camp outside the factory gate. Because it’s on public land, there’s little Blanco or his Falstaffian guard Román (Fernando Abizul) can do about it. Each day José finds new ways to annoy Blanco.

 

Nonetheless, Blanco believes his good reputation gives him influence. When long-time employee Fortunata (Celso Bugallo) asks Blanco to talk to his son Salva, Blanco does so and secures him a job as a courier for this wife’s shop. Alas, Salva (Martin Páez) is a racist skinhead punk who plays Blanco like a cheap accordion, so don’t expect this to go well. To make matters worse, his floor manager Miralles (Manolo Solo) whom he has known since childhood is depressed and screwing up orders. Miralles tells Blanco  that his wife has left him. Blanco to the rescue? How would you feel if someone tried to intervene in your personal affairs? Even if you’ve never taken a psychology class you might suspect that Blanco is reality-challenged. Even though he has a daughter and is married to the striking Adela (Sonia Almarcha), Blanco has a roving eye for a new intern, Lilianna (Almundena Amor).

 

In an attempt to cheer up Miralles, Blanco takes him to a bar staffed by ladies of easy virtue. Something happens there that seriously complicates matters, as does a dinner with a couple he and Adela have known for many years that is beyond awkward. Blanco finds himself in a power play he cannot win. Will Blanco be able to add the award for excellence to his wall of citations and trophies? Let’s just say that changes are made.

 

The Good Boss is like a more subtle version of  9 to 5 and with the tasteful score of Zetia Montes rather than the downhome country of Dolly Parton in 9 to 5. * The Good Boss, though, is funnier. Bardem doesn’t do physical comedy like Buster Keaton, but he does borrow a page of bathos from Keaton’s book. He practically oozes befuddlement when forced to confront the gaps between how he’d like to be perceived and how others see him. For the most part, he is a good boss, but he constantly flunks the Boundaries 101 test.

 

The Good Boss is well-acted all around, even when the parts are small. Because everyone is so effective, we see things Blanco does not. We can tell, for instance, that Fortuna is willing to do things to keep his job, but he doesn’t want to be Blanco’s buddy. There is also a matter of key employees leveraging the fact that corporate culture operates on power arrangements, not smiles and smarm.

 

But let’s not overanalyze. The Good Boss is indeed a comedy that plays things for laughs, not a sociology class. Check it out on Fandango or Paramount + and see how understatement is a hoot of a different  volume.

 

Rob Weir