The Good Boss: Smart Workplace Satire Soars on Javier Bardem

By Karen Gordon

Rating: A-

There are a number of excellent reasons to see Spanish writer-director’s Fernando León de Aranoa’s workplace comedy/satire The Good Boss, but one of the best is the performance by Javier Bardem.

Bardem plays Blanco, the owner of Básculas Blanco, a company that manufactures industrial scales. Sometime in the next week, a team will drop in to inspect his operation, which is in competition to receive an award for Business Excellence. He wants to win it, not just for ego, but also because it will open the door to money from the government.

But the week starts out with a big problem.

Jose (Óscar de la Fuente), who was let go due to company downsizing, wants his job back. No longer able to afford his mortgage and unwilling to go quietly, he sets up camp on a field across the street from company gates, making his case through a loudspeaker, and hanging giant painted signs aimed at getting Blanco’s attention that get more aggressive as the week goes on.

That puts Román (Fernando Albizu), the gentle security guard, in an unfortunately stressful position, as he is face-to-face with his former colleague’s misery every day.

Inside the plant, more problems crop up. Blanco’s head of production and childhood friend Miralles (Manolo Solo) is suddenly very distracted and causing problems and delays because of his marital woes. And the younger Khaled (Tarik Rmili), head of logistics, is more than happy to step in while Miralles is too absorbed in his personal problems to notice.

At the other end of the spectrum is Fortuna (Celso Bugallo), who has worked on the company’s assembly line since Blanco’s father’s time. Fortuna has a perpetually worried look on his face and is loyal to a fault. He turns to Blanco to help him bail out his teenage son who is hanging out with a bad crowd and has gotten himself into trouble.

And then there’s a new trio of interns, including the lovely marketing specialist Liliana (Almudena Amor), who Blanco, in a seemingly comfortable and solid marriage, has nevertheless taken note of.

Blanco, who inherited the company from his father, has a confident casual manner and likes to talk about the plant and its workers like they’re all one family. To some extent, a lot of the connections go back far enough so that it seems natural that in this smaller Spanish town, the lines get blurry.

The film is divided into days of the week. On each day, the problems — some ongoing, some new, and Blanco’s attempts to sort his various employees out — seem to add up to more complications. Blanco doesn’t break a sweat, but as the week goes on, he continues to play a kind of ringmaster aiming to tie up all the problems before the assessment team for the Business Excellence award shows up.

Aranoa’s clever script keeps the action moving seamlessly and entertainingly. With each new problem, large or small, the situation in the plant, and their relationship with Blanco (or his relationship to them) subtly shifts. Office politics, check. Toxic workplace, check. All familiar to anyone who has ever held a job where there is a hierarchy.

Aranoa has pulled together an excellent cast. But holding it all together is the formidable and always watchable Bardem.

His performance makes this satire also a character study. In his hands, Blanco is as easygoing and appealing as he is manipulative. His smile doesn’t change as the film goes on. Our way of relating to that smile might, but he’s hard to completely dislike. He’s not a cartoon cliche of a villainous capitalist. Not even close. And he’s not the only manipulator in the group.

Still, Aranoa is also making some larger points about both workers and bosses. In this particularly significant week, the company that makes scales, an obvious metaphor for balance and justice, is undergoing a subtle daily recalibration, and part of that are issues of loyalty and ethics that should be in balance but, given human nature, rarely are.

The Good Boss is not cartoon critique of capitalism. Aranoa’s trick is to make his satire feel much more grounded than that, and, in its way, even more unsettling.

The Good Boss. Written and directed by Fernando León de Aranoa. Starring Javier Bardem, Manolo Solo, Almudena Amor. In theatres August 26.