“The Good Boss” (M) **** and a half

THIS intelligent dramatic visualisation of dominating and preserving a Spanish business at all costs and against all odds while satisfying one man’s wishes, ambitions and carnal ambitions was an Oscar contender.

Heir to his father’s business, building professional-grade scales, Blanco (Javier Bardem) rules his workforce absolutely, wheedling them with paternal care, firing those whom he no longer needs.

Dismissed employee José (Óscar de la Fuente) is staging a one-man protest across the road from the factory gate. Blanco has fallen out with life-long friend and colleague Miralles (Manolo Solo). He employs female interns for their looks and carnal availability. His wife’s perception of the real man may go behind the veil of gentle public goodwill, but she’s not about to endanger her good life.

Clever writing by Spanish director Fernando Leon de Aranoa provides an environment in which the filmgoer might at first think that the film is only going to be about employer/employee relationships. That is indeed the case. But the true character that de Aranoa has given Bardem to play is not how at first sight it might seem. And that gives the film its real bite.

By the end of “The Good Boss”, we have been forced to review our opinion of this man. The experience may be discomforting, but that paradox delivers a rewarding benefit, sending us away realising that what we have seen is not what we at first were thinking that de Aranoa was giving us – a not simple but nicely complicated tangle to ponder and unravel.

At Palace Electric