Le comédien Javier Bardem.
Biutiful, Inárritu in unknown territory
Mexican director of Babel, which won Best Director Prize in 2006, will present his new feature film Biutiful, this Monday in Competition (Grand Théâtre Lumière, 8:30, 15:00, 19:00). A film made without Guillermo Arriaga, his regular screen writer.
Biutiful inaugurates a new direction in the career of Alejandro González Inárritu. For the first time since Amores Perros (2000), a feature film that marked his first work behind the camera, the director has worked without Guillermo Arriaga, his regular script writer who has been an accomplice in one of the main features that distinguish Inárritu’s brand of film: choral narration.
For casting, the Mexican director has taken on some of the iconic actors of Pedro Almodovar : Blanca Portillo (Volver) and Ruben Ochandiano (Broken Embraces). At the head of this configuration he has placed Javier Bardem, who was in Cannes previously in 2007 for No Country For Old Men, and in 2005 for the Jury Emir Kusturica. “I wrote Biutiful with Javier on my mind and I couldn’t be more proud of the work we have done together,” the director confides.
To describe his new feature film, Inárritu evokes “these films that take you into territories that you are afraid you will never come back from.” An allusion to the daily struggle of Uxbal, his main character, who is torn between the future of his children and his survival in a ghetto.
B.P.
