The Beloved begins with a 20-minute sequence in which a famous director Esteban Martínez, played with stunning precision by Javier Bardem, meets his estranged daughter after 13 years and offers her a part in his next film. Emilia (a superb Victoria Luengo) accepts the offer but in that first encounter, we get a sense of the deep resentment, guilt and emotional scars embedded into this relationship. All of which inevitably comes to the forefront as father and daughter shoot a period drama set in the 1930s in the Western Sahara desert (with the Canary Islands functioning as a stand-in).
The set-up might remind you of last year’s International Oscar winner Sentimental Value but director Rodrigo Sorogoyen does something entirely different here. Esteban is auteur, father, recovering alcoholic, tortured artist and toxic boss all rolled into one. In another extended sequence on set, we finally see the aggression that he is capable of. He becomes so frightening that his female DOP quits the film.
Sorogoyen uses music, plays with film ratio and stock and delivers a moving and consistently masterful portrait of movie-making and the devastating debris of human relationships.