The Beloved begins with an extended series of close-ups. An estranged father and daughter meet after 13 years apart. He's a former alcoholic with a violent past, and she has built up impenetrable walls to shield herself from the trauma.
Their conversation begins amicably over what they should eat, what they've been doing, and so on. Then, he asks if she still goes to the cinema. Suddenly, the floodgates open. She remembers all the times they went together, and how he was usually drunk and mean. He tries to steer the conversation to the future and the film he wants her to join as an actor. But there's no relief from the past when the only language they share, film, is tainted by memories of a worse life.
This is only the first scene of the film, and it is some of the most riveting cinema I've seen all year. The Beloved only gets better from there, as writer/director Rodrigo Sorogoyen paints a rich and textured story of forgiveness, our personal histories, and how cinema is as much an escape as it is a reflection of ourselves. It will be compared to last year's Sentimental Value in the coming months, but it is a distinct and equally impressive beast of its own.
Anchored by brilliant performances from Javier Bardem and Victoria Luengo, The Beloved doesn't pander to its audience. It offers no easy answers or well-meaning but empty platitudes. Instead, there's a melancholy sense that some things, when broken, can never be fixed again. They will always be chipped in some way, with rough textures that remind us of past hurts.
Bardem has never been better. He's always been a tremendous actor who can transform and disappear into any part despite his hulking and larger-than-life presence. Here, he uses his physique to amplify the past bully who still lives somewhere deep inside Esteban, a famed director who liked alcohol and drugs more than he liked belonging to a family. Watch how Bardem carries himself, stooping and walking softly when he puts on the mask of what he wants to be, and how his demeanor grows erratic, like a cornered bull, when he reverts to the beast he was. It is a grand piece of acting that could work without any dialogue and still tell a full story.
Equally impressive is Victoria Luengo as Emilia, Esteban's estranged daughter, whom he cut out of his life so totally that when she joins the film, her existence surprises the tightly knit crew. Luengo plays multiple roles within the same part; at once a daughter wanting to impress her father, an actress in over her head, and a grown woman struggling with her own demons that may mimic the self-destructive behaviors of a man who is now her boss. You could watch The Beloved a dozen times and still discover new depths to her work. It is as deep and complex and beautiful as the ocean.
There's a scene later in the film where Esteban's past anger bubbles over. He's directing an innocuous dinner scene, and what begins as a flubbed line soon escalates into an exercise of brutal domination, where power dynamics between colleagues, parents and children, and men and women all collide. It is a fascinating and deeply difficult scene to watch, and even more difficult to get right. Yet The Beloved leaves no moment unexplored. By the end, we know more, and wish we knew less.
Around this, Sorogoyen and his talented cast build a textured world of filmmaking that feels lived-in and real. It is one of the most accurate and lovingly crafted films about the act of making them. A film set feels removed from reality, especially in a remote location, and Sorogoyen captures the feel of a traveling circus beautifully. Everyone carries with them some baggage they've brought in from the outside world, and everyone uses that to make their art. When people meet again in reality, it feels stranger than it did on set.
It is from these bizarre contradictions and fragmented realities that Sorogoyen has created a masterpiece. The Beloved is an overwhelming and honest portrait of regret, passion, hope, forgiveness, and both the ability and inability to let go. It is impossibly ambitious, yet disguises that ambition in such technical proficiency that you might mistake it as traditional.
But, like life, there is far more to it than that. So much so that it will take years to appreciate it all, and even then, it might not be enough.
