The Good Boss: Spain’s 2022 Oscar Submission for Best International Feature

Last week, I attended an intimate event celebrating the 20 Goya nominations of The Good Boss, a film by Fernando Leon de Aranoa featuring Javier Bardem about an equally charming and evil boss who would do anything for his business. And when I say anything, I mean it. In a Machiavellian way, the end always justifies the means – even when those means are lying, leaving people in the streets, and even murdering.

This dark comedy quickly hooks you in with all the drama that is brewing in this mid-size factory in the north of Spain: love affairs, betrayals, feuds…and Mr.Blanco (Bardem) a boss who is trying to put out those fires, or at least not get burnt by them. Like in other Leon de Aranoa’s movies, everything is not black or white, but a sublime array of grays. Blanco doesn’t hit you as a total mercenary from the get go. He has a fatherly demeanor that makes his employees think they can go to him whenever they need it, but behind his empty words of “Effort, Equilibrium, Loyalty,” he is in fact someone who will quickly change gears and roll the heads of those who threaten to decrease his revenue or damage his reputation.

When talking to Fernando about the movie, I asked him if it is possible to be a good boss and make your employees rich, or if that is intrinsically impossible in a capitalistic system. “That’s the eternal debate. But it certainly goes against the rules of the game.”

“Para que haya ricos, tiene que haber pobres…“ this is something my father used to say. Like in Squid Game, you might enter the game in good faith and with a good heart, but getting to the top can sometimes mean you need to become ruthless.

This is not his first movie that tackles the issues of our broken system. He probably witnessed when the manufacturing started shifting to cheaper countries, and many people were left jobless. Los Lunes al Sol, with Bardem as well, tells the story of people who worked in a dockyard, but are now unemployed, left with nothing to do but sunbathe while they wait for the country who let the companies go offshore to take care of them.

I hope this movie makes it into the Oscars, because it’s definitely a movie that makes you think.