The Good Boss film review — Javier Bardem is grandly magnetic in Spanish corporate satire

We are often invited to feel sorry for Julio Blanco (Javier Bardem), the captain of industry at the centre of teasing Spanish satire The Good Boss. Typically, the invitation comes from Blanco himself, owner of a high-end manufacturer of industrial scales. The company is like a family, he tells his workforce. And as with the head of any family, it pains him when his children leave. Female interns, for example, in whose welfare he sometimes takes particular interest. Or now redundant employees, whose exits he finds so upsetting, he prefers not to set eyes on them. “Goodbyes are really tough,” he says.

No — the comedy whipped up by writer-director Fernando León de Aranoa is not subtle. Neither is there any reason for the movie to run two hours. But for all the bagginess and overly on-the-nose symbolism, it can also display a finely calibrated grasp of farce. As de Aranoa sets to business, an intern and a sacked workman become twin accelerants in a flammable mix that also includes Blanco’s see-no-evil wife, a loyal retainer with a delinquent teenage son, and a life-long colleague in crisis. A timer is attached to the lot by a pending visit from the judges of an award for corporate excellence.

As anti-capitalist screed, the sharpest barbs are almost throwaway (the film casually notes that Blanco’s self-made man inherited the factory from his father). Business leaders would be wholly justified in asking what experience the film-makers have of their lives to mount such a sweeping attack. On the other hand, they get to be embodied by a grandly magnetic Bardem. Some might call it a fair trade.

★★★☆☆

On Curzon Home Cinema and in UK cinemas from July 15