Cine Las Americas 2022 Review: El Buen Patrón (The Good Boss)
By Lina Fisher, June 23, 2022, 8:30pm, Picture in Picture
Blanco (Javier Bardem), the titular boss of an industrial scales manufacturer in El Buen Patrón (The Good Boss), is preparing the factory to be reviewed for his thousandth award for excellence, but things become unbalanced in Fernando León de Aranoa's Oscar-selected film.
A motley crew of characters, each with their own vignettes that Blanco meddles in, makes The Good Boss feel like The Office, a delicious ensemble satire, but Bardem’s inherent magnetism veers it into Shakespearean/Succession territory. For all the dry wit, The Good Boss is ultimately a portrait of a megalomaniac, and a satisfying parable of the inherent rottenness of capitalist greed: As Blanco says, “Sometimes you have to trick the scale to get the exact weight.”
El Buen Patrón (The Good Boss)
Cine Las Americas International Film Festival 2022, June 8-12.
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