FYI: Spanish with sub-titles: “Tragic” seems to be the word that comes to mind in watching the harrowing performance of Javier Bardem as Uxbal from Barcelona. He’s a man caught in a world of death (his), the here-after (he’s a psychic), his parenting (he has two small children) and the slums of Barcelona…an underground world of knock-off purses and illegal immigrants. On that note, the movie feels like four forces that never quite merge into any cohesive plot, yet we stay glued on Uxbal’s life story, anxious to see who will take care of the children should he pass away. Where’s the mother to the children, you ask? Fighting off bi-polar disorder… thus making our single father more of a hero in a not-so-heroic film. Director Alejandro Gonzalez last brought us Babel. In this, he gets a performance out of Bardem that will not only earn Oscar buzz, but his character has a keen insight into darkness, plunges into his own destructive grimness, and at the same time, it’s his sheer determination to see it all through that makes him an unlikely hero. Three tiaras
