Biutiful

Name: Biutiful
Genre: Drama
Released: December 29, 2010
Duration: 147 min
Rating: 58
Cast: Javier Bardem

2010

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Mixed or average reviews based on 33 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 120 Ratings

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7.2

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7.2	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 120 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

Liddell Entertainment | Release Date: December 29, 2010 | R

Starring: Javier Bardem

Summary: Academy Award winner Javier Bardem plays a man on the wrong side of the law who struggles to provide for his children on the dangerous streets of Barcelona. The latest film from Academy Award nominee Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Biutiful won the award for Best Actor at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival and is sure to be one of the mostAcademy Award winner Javier Bardem plays a man on the wrong side of the law who struggles to provide for his children on the dangerous streets of Barcelona. The latest film from Academy Award nominee Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Biutiful won the award for Best Actor at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival and is sure to be one of the most talked-about films of the year.(Roadside Attractions)… Expand

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu

Genre(s): Drama

Rating: R

Runtime: 147 min

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Critic Reviews

Kirk Honeycutt

Dec 30, 2010

Biutiful has a strong, linear narrative drive. Nevertheless, and most of all, it's a gorgeous, melancholy tone poem about love, fatherhood and guilt. Read full review

Bill Goodykoontz

Jan 27, 2011

It's Bardem's portrayal of his search for those answers that drives Biutiful forward. Read full review

Sean O'Connell

Jan 28, 2011

Biutiful soars to its highest points once it shifts its focus away from death to ask us how we are choosing to live our lives. Read full review

Joe Williams

Feb 3, 2011

The saving grace of Biutiful is Bardem. Read full review

Joe Neumaier

Dec 29, 2010

Here, it's all Bardem, and this great actor's careworn face and sensitive presence counts for a lot. He ultimately can't save the soul of Biutiful, but he makes the journey easier. Read full review

Peter Rainer

Jan 29, 2011

Iñárritu does the actor no favors by putting him through the existential wringer every step of the way. Uxbal suffers for all our sins. Read full review

Melissa Anderson

Dec 28, 2010

Though its structure may be whittled down in comparison with the earlier works, Biutiful is even more morbidly obese than "Babel" in terms of soggy ideas, elephantine with miserabilist humanism and redemption jibber-jabber. Read full review

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User Reviews

Mrtruegrit2288

Feb 12, 2012

The film is painful there's no doubt about about that but Inarritu's genius is it's ability to captivate, to grab on and not let go and to make you feel every moment of pain desperation. The cast is flawless, and Bardem is without a doubt, the single greatest actor that Spain has produced .

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

Belmsher

Sep 12, 2011

Bardem's performance is ABSOLUTELY haunting and that is more than enough to rate this 10. Another highlight: it shows a side of Barcelona most of the people who visit the city never thought of.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

MattBrady99

Jul 5, 2017

"Look in my eyes. Look at my face. Remember me, please. Don't forget me, Ana. Don't forget me, my love, please."

I really don't get how everyone says this and "Babel" are Iñárritu worst movies. I don't get it. This movie was so beautiful in every sense of the word. Sad, but real. Can I"Look in my eyes. Look at my face. Remember me, please. Don't forget me, Ana. Don't forget me, my love, please."

I really don't get how everyone says this and "Babel" are Iñárritu worst movies. I don't get it. This movie was so beautiful in every sense of the word. Sad, but real.

Can I just say how brilliant of an actor Javier Bardem is. It's nothing new, but it begs repeating, and here it absolutely dose. Without spoiling anything, but the scene between him and his daughter was one of the most moving and human things I've ever seen. It was hard to watch for the right reasons. Facial expressions alone with barley any dialogue spoken, you as an audience member feel and understand him without seeing the whole picture.

"Biutiful" is another fantastic movie from my favorite living director Alejandro González Iñárritu. Having this spiritual atmosphere to it, which is a trademark in all of he's movies; the beginning and the end are example of such. The score from Gustavo Santaolalla was great and really added to the surreal experience I've had with this movie. The mixture of beautiful cinematography, score, and the performances, made this even more melancholic.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

DawdlingPoet

Nov 24, 2021

I thought this film would be nice for a special day/ocassion - I had a feeling it would appeal to me quite a lot. Its certainly very grim and I suppose that was to be expected but if anything it was even more sort of despairing and bleak than I'd expected - its less philosophical (aboutI thought this film would be nice for a special day/ocassion - I had a feeling it would appeal to me quite a lot. Its certainly very grim and I suppose that was to be expected but if anything it was even more sort of despairing and bleak than I'd expected - its less philosophical (about death) and more an almost character based diary (although the precise days aren't specified to the viewer but otherwise the analogy works) of the sad circumstances he's faced with and has to adapt to, with mistakes unfolding along the way.

It covers themes including illness, forgiveness and exploitation.

It has to be said that Javier Bardem does give an outstanding performance as the main character, Uxbal. His stoicism and determinism is certainly respectable. I should perhaps also point out that this film does include some quite shaky/jerky camerawork, which may frustrate some people - I think its to give it that sort of regular, street shot, urban feel to it - its not at all a big glitzy Hollywood film, of course. There is a poignancy to it, even though it is really quite subtle I suppose.

I would recommend this film, as long as you know its quite a bleak watch.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

amheretojudge

Aug 12, 2018

hauntingly poignant to a point where the audience surrenders itself in its belle..

Biutiful 3 Out Of 5 Biutiful is a character driven dramatic feature about a father figured personality that breathes for its metaphorical children till the end. Clocking for almost 150 minutes, Inarrituhauntingly poignant to a point where the audience surrenders itself in its belle..

Biutiful

3 Out Of 5

Biutiful is a character driven dramatic feature about a father figured personality that breathes for its metaphorical children till the end. Clocking for almost 150 minutes, Inarritu adequately puts all of his guns on the table and narrows it down on such simplistic terms, which can even communicate to a 4 year old kid; not something that everyone can achieve. Having said that, the concepts that the audience works on, in its initial stages seems to have shucked away for its own closure; it had the potential to end on a higher ideal than it does in here. As always, the camera work is amazing and up-close that is handled manually to achieve more closeness with the viewers through character's perspective. The writing is elaborative, adaptive and enough to feed off the audience to its run-time but what's itchy in here, is its nature to restart the clock every now and then as it jumps to another sequence of the feature, where clearly it was supposed to flow and resume the clock. As mentioned, Inarritu has clearly poured his soul into its project for there barely lies a weak spot on execution in the entire feature. And then all the work lies upon Bardem to pull it off on performance objective which he does convincingly. Inarritu's world is a stage where the rehearsal is prior to the final act hence there is a raw beauty present in the air that makes its anatomy more eye-catching. Stunning cinematography, fine production design, manipulative emotional drama and stellar performance are the high points of the feature. Biutiful is hauntingly poignant to a point where the audience surrenders itself in its belle, but overly chewed love letters like such often finds itself lost in a closet.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Shiira

Mar 17, 2011

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The first time you see somebody peeing blood, that's cause for moviegoer sympathy. A second time, however, well, that's just showing off. Outside of Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist", it's not every movie which dares to feature graphic, and in this case, gratuitous urination. (Willem Dafoe pisses blood just once.) Since "Biutiful" is, ultimately, a horror movie in two senses, it's interesting how this visceral grotesquerie corresponds to the non-genre side of the categorical divide. Not only does Uxbal(Javier Bardem) piss a weak arcing stream of dark brown liquid, he also pisses in his pants. Cancer's effects has left him incontinent. Very soon, the low-level criminal will be needing to wear extra-protection. Needless to say, the filmmaker shows Bardem in a diaper, because that's how miserabilists like him roll. The filmmaker challenges Bardem to find the dignity in his indignity. The filmmaker makes sure that his audience feels something for this dying man, leaving no stone unturned for this father of two children, a boy and a girl, whom he exploits unmercifully as a point of manipulation for the movie's life and death matters. He banks on the great reservoirs of feelings that most moviegoers possess for the death-affected young. To the miserabilist, an emotion like joy can only be applied fleetingly and ironically, as a temporal reprieve from a permeated mis-en-scene of unremitting fatalism, the film's prevailing diegetic expression, thus when resumed, right about the time Ana blows out her celebratory candle, will turn out to be all the more devastating, this resignation of hope, just like how the filmmaker planned it. He wants to take all the wind out of our sails. He knows, and we know, that Ana's eleventh birthday is going to be her last happy one for awhile. Because the fix is in, where nothing positive can arise from these tragic circumstances, due to the filmmaker's aesthetics, Marambra(Marciel Alvarez), Uxbel's ex-wife, we know, will continue to struggle with her bipolar condition, even though Uxbel is counting on her to be a full-time mother. From the very start, we know she's out of the running for full custody of Ana and Pedro. For the most part, the filmmaker sets her up to be a misfit parent. The screenplay never allows for a scene where Uxbel informs this cocaine-addled woman about his disease. Oblivious to Uxbel's bloody pee, Marambara isn't given a fair shake in the redemption department. If she knew the whole story, maybe the bad mother would have the impetus to change. While his condition gets worse and worse, the film invites you to hate Marambra, who is predisposed towards inter-family infidelities and child abuse, dealbreakers both, but entirely avoidable had full disclosure been practiced. With nowhere else to turn, the de factor orphans are entrusted to an almost complete stranger. In the tradition of noble, self-sacrificing black women, Ige(Diaryatu Daff), a Senegalese woman whom Uxbel knows only by association, is supposed to jump at the chance to look after a white man's children, but she subverts this cliched attitude toward non-white females(which has the effect of complimenting the one-man United Nations for his colorblindness) by returning to Africa with the money originally allocated for her charges' welfare. Is it the filmmaker's intentions to associate Ige with the story that Tito tells Uxbel about the supposedly loyal tiger who bites the face of its trusting owner. Is "Biutiful" that unfair? Because Uxbel is such a nice guy, we lose sight of the fact that he's a profiteer, complicit to the exploitation which leads to the sweatshop gassing and the sidewalk vendors(Ige's husband included) being deported back home. In reality, Ige owes him nothing. Last seen at the airport, for a split second, we think that Ige had changed her mind, but the voice we hear back at the dark apartment is of Uxbel's own making. For a split second, we think Uxbel will die with peace of mind, knowing that his children will be taken care of. But alas, a relatively happy ending is not in the filmmaker's vocabulary. Uxbel dies with his children's welfare unresolved. As aforementioned, "Biutiful" is a horror movie. Not in the genre sense where Uxbel has the sixth sense and can see dead people, but rather it's the horror of watching a man die slow and hard.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Humprt

Jun 5, 2011

Very very slow and monotone. If you want to feel depressed without a real purpose, try this movie. Visually not bad, overall, I see a missed opportunity.

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

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