--- title: "Biutiful" year: 2010 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/biutiful" fi1m_score: 63 critics_score: 58 critics_reviews: 23 published: "2026-09-17T12:10:55.478703+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T12:11:08.868718+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Biutiful (2010) Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu · 2h 28m · MPA R · Drama **Fi1m score: 63** · Critics 58 from 23 reviews *In a sentence:* Javier Bardem carries a whole city’s suffering on his back and Iñárritu keeps adding to the load > Alejandro González Iñárritu drops the shuffled timelines and gives Javier Bardem the whole film, and Bardem is magnificent in it. Around him the director piles on misfortune until even a performance this good cannot make us feel each new one. ## Synopsis Barcelona, the parts the tourists do not see. Uxbal (Javier Bardem) makes his living in the city’s underground economy: he places undocumented Chinese workers with the sweatshop boss Hai (Cheng Taishen), moves their counterfeit goods through Senegalese street vendors such as Ekweme (Cheikh Ndiaye), and pays off the police to look the other way. On the side he takes money from the grieving to pass on last words from the recently dead. He is raising Ana (Hanaa Bouchaib) and Mateo (Guillermo Estrella) alone in a damp flat, their mother Marambra (Maricel Álvarez) having drifted off towards his brother Tito (Eduard Fernández). Then a doctor tells him he has months to live, and he has to work out who will look after his children when he is gone. ## Review Alejandro González Iñárritu made his name with films that ran several stories at once and cut between them: [*Amores Perros*](https://film.one/film/amores-perros) (2000), *21 Grams* (2003), [*Babel*](https://film.one/film/babel) (2006). *Biutiful* has one story, one city and one man, told in order. It is the most disciplined thing he had made to that point and also, in its way, the most excessive, because having given up the shuffled timelines he replaces them with sheer weight of misfortune. Javier Bardem is as good here as we have ever seen him. The film around him is handsome, sincere and too much. Bardem plays Uxbal as a man who has been tired for years. He walks with his shoulders forward and his hands in his pockets, speaks quietly, and keeps the accounts of an entire illegal economy in his head. When the diagnosis comes he does not weep or rage; he goes home and gets the children their dinner. That scene moved us more than anything the script later engineers, because Bardem plays it as a man who has decided the news can wait until the plates are cleared. Later, alone, he looks at his own face in the bathroom mirror for a long time, and the film has the sense to let him. Rodrigo Prieto shoots Barcelona with a handheld camera and heavy grain, under sodium street lamps and fluorescent tubes, so that the city looks bruised. Brigitte Broch gives Uxbal a flat with a water-stained ceiling he keeps looking up at, and the Chinese workers a basement behind a padlocked door where the mattresses lie in rows. You can smell these rooms. Gustavo Santaolalla’s score is a few plucked strings, used sparingly and often withheld, and it is the film’s most tactful element. Stephen Mirrione cuts it in order and without hurry, which is right for the first hour and a problem for the last, because 148 minutes is a long time to watch one man lose things. That is the trouble. Uxbal has cancer. His ex-wife Marambra (Maricel Álvarez) drinks, swings between euphoria and violence, and has been sleeping with his brother Tito (Eduard Fernández). The Senegalese vendors he supplies are rounded up in a street raid, and Ekweme (Cheikh Ndiaye) is among them. The sweatshop boss Hai (Cheng Taishen) is having an affair with his partner Liwei (Luo Jin) that the film treats as another ticking clock. Uxbal also sees the dead, and passes on their last words for cash. Any two of these would make a film. All of them together stop landing as events and start landing as policy. Somewhere past the two-hour mark we were tired, and then annoyed with a film that could not let a man be dying without also arranging for everyone around him to be in trouble. The supernatural strand is the weakest. Iñárritu shows us moths gathering on a ceiling and figures pressed flat against it, and the images are eerie in themselves, but they answer no question the rest of the film asks. Uxbal’s gift never changes what he does; it is there to lend the misery a spiritual gloss. Álvarez is superb as Marambra, funny and frightening within the same minute, and she deserved a character rather than a condition. Diaryatou Daff, as Ekweme’s wife Ige, gives the film its one still centre, a woman who owes Uxbal nothing and watches him with a clear eye. Against Iñárritu’s own record this is the film that proves he never needed the shuffled structure. Told straight, *Biutiful* is more coherent than *Babel* and its images are stronger. What it lacks is the earlier films’ sense that misfortune could arrive from a direction you did not expect. Here it arrives from every direction at once, on schedule. See it for Bardem, who is on screen for nearly every minute and carries all of it. Watch it at home and in two sittings, and not on an evening when you need lifting. Ana (Hanaa Bouchaib), doing her homework, asks her father how to spell an English word, and he tells her to write it the way it sounds; the title comes from that. It is the film’s lightest moment, and it is over in seconds. *Fi1m score 63, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Almost every critic agrees about Javier Bardem. His performance as Uxbal, a Barcelona hustler with a terminal diagnosis and two children to provide for, is called restrained, dignified and controlled, the best work he has done, and the thing that holds the film together. The photography of the city’s poorer quarters is the other point of agreement, praised even by those who dislike the film. The warmer reviews find the closing scenes raw and moving. The spread is wide. Most critics accept the film is grim; the argument is whether it is grim to any purpose. Nearly half find the run time, the parade of misfortune and the supernatural strand ponderous or self-important, and a few call it misery for its own sake. The Independent gives it one star out of five and finds it pious and short of energy; The AV Club calls it an oppressive dirge. Reviews written from its festival premiere are markedly colder than those on its later release. ### Reviews we read (23) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Kirk Honeycutt (80/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as a gorgeous, melancholy tone poem about love, fatherhood and guilt, with some scenes absolutely wrenching to behold. Bardem delivers a knockout performance as the complex hero. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/biutiful-film-review-29616/) - **The Times**, Kate Muir (80/100, inferred): The award-winning film is overcooked and melodramatic yet brilliant, leaving audiences sobbing, thanks to a searing central performance by Bardem as a hustler facing mortality. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/biutiful-0pjr3l86frt) - **Time Out**, Trevor Johnston (4/5): The critic praises Javier Bardem's career-best, restrained performance as the lead, which grounds the film's sprawling story of suffering, family, and compassion. They highlight how the film evokes strong emotional responses despite its chaotic elements and grim tone. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/biutiful) - **Total Film**, Kevin Harley (80/100, inferred): The review says the film is ferocious filmmaking with lyrical austerity and conviction, benefiting from its linear structure and fierce focus on Bardem, though it occasionally over-reaches; the closing scenes hit raw emotional nerves effectively. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/biutiful-review/) - **Empire**, Andrew Male (75/100, inferred): The critic notes that the single-location focus and Bardem's weary, dignified performance give the film a profound effect and edge it toward a new kind of greatness as a modern classical tragedy, despite its heavy parade of misfortune. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/biutiful-review/) - **Los Angeles Times**, Betsy Sharkey (70/100, inferred): The critic singles out Bardem's staggering depth and the collaboration with Iñárritu for mining profound sadness into a story of hope and protection of loved ones amid terminal illness. The film is faulted for trying to say too much, creating an overwhelming emotional load. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-dec-29-la-et-biutiful-20101229-story.html) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (70/100, inferred): The film is impressive and arrestingly made with a distinctive created world and visual poetry, but it is also exasperating, unconvincing and verges on misery porn. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jan/27/biutiful-review) - **The Telegraph** (***): It is an oppressively bleak but intermittently powerful heavyweight dramatic experience, carried by Bardem's measured and moving performance as the doomed Uxbal. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/8287044/Biutiful-review.html) - **Evening Standard** (60/100, inferred): The review finds the film remorselessly downbeat and overlong with grim fatalism that can seem ponderous, but praises its brilliant shooting and especially Javier Bardem's masterly central performance as the highlight. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/javier-bardem-at-his-alltime-best-in-biutiful-7423399.html) - **The New York Times**, A.O. Scott (60/100, inferred): The critic praises Javier Bardem's passionate, physically charismatic yet sensitive performance as the film's central strength in this gritty story of an underworld figure and dying father. However, the narrative is seen as straining for emotional credibility it does not fully earn. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/movies/29biut.html) - **Slant Magazine**, Ed Gonzalez (50/100, inferred): The critic notes the director's continued appetite for overstatement and a cynical view of life, but praises Bardem's performance and finds poignant moments in the reflection on inheritance and bodily decay. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/biutiful/) - **The AV Club**, Scott Tobias (C-): The critic sees the film as an irritating, oppressive 150-minute dirge full of piled-up tragedies and magical realism that fails to relieve the gloom. Bardem and Álvarez deliver fine work amid the excess. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/biutiful-1798166861) - **Variety**, Justin Chang (40/100, inferred): The critic highlights Bardem's powerful, beautifully controlled performance and the film's raw visual style as strengths in this linear character study of a doomed father. It is criticized as a long, heavy descent into purgatory with scant emotional rewards and a sense of the director stuck in a grim rut. [Read](https://variety.com/2010/film/markets-festivals/biutiful-1117942786/) - **IndieWire**, Eric Kohn (30/100, inferred): The review calls the film a misguided melodrama, criticizing its excesses while noting the director's ambitions. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/cannes-review-misguided-melodrama-alejandro-gonzalez-inarritus-biutiful-55096/) - **Screen Daily** (30/100, inferred): The review finds the film overextended and leaden with overbearing portentousness and unrelenting grimness, criticizing its solemn handling of bleak social issues despite strong cinematography. It notes Bardem's dignified performance but doubts the redemption arc. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/biutiful/5014029.article) - **The Independent** (1/5): The critic calls the film 147 minutes of handwringing miserabilism and a glum drama of good intentions gone wrong, faulting its pious self-importance and lack of energy after the director's split from his regular screenwriter. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/barney-s-version-15-biutiful-15-3-5-1-5-2196231.html) - **Collider**, Dave Trumbore (75/100, inferred): The film is a relentless, bleak character study centered on Uxbal's desperate attempts to provide for his children and seek redemption amid cancer, crime, and family turmoil. Bardem's performance anchors the intimate drama as its strongest element. [Read](https://collider.com/biutiful-blu-ray-review/) - **Digital Spy**, Mayer Nissim (70/100, inferred): The critic praises the heartbreaking story and Javier Bardem's performance but notes the supernatural element is unnecessary. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/cannes-film-festival/a220624/cannes-2010-biutiful/) - **Eye for Film**, Val Kermode (70/100, inferred): The critic praises the film as one with real heart about how life becomes more precious as it runs out, highlighting Javier Bardem's stronger, more all-encompassing performance than in any of his previous films as the standout element. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/biutiful-film-review-by-val-kermode) - **The Skinny**, Keir Roper-Caldbeck (3/5): The film is relentlessly grim, with moments of cinematic beauty from the photography and a towering performance by Bardem, but ultimately leaves one wishing for some relief from the suffering. [Read](https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/dvd-reviews/biutiful) - **HeyUGuys**, Simon Gallagher (40/100, inferred): The review finds Biutiful a tedious slog despite technical achievements and strong visuals of Barcelona's dark underbelly, but singles out Javier Bardem's mesmerizing, deeply layered performance as the film's main saving grace. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/heyuguys-at-cannes-2010-biutiful-review/) - **Paste**, Paste Staff (40/100, inferred): Biutiful piles on misery and heavy-handed symbolism without cohering into a compelling story despite its linear focus on one protagonist. Bardem and some individual scenes show promise, but the film feels like an overlong rough cut full of clichés. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/alejandro-gonzalez-inarritu/biutiful-review) - **The Playlist** (30/100, inferred): The critic calls the film impeccably acted and wonderfully shot but ultimately not particularly interesting, noting that its sprawl and lack of a central emotional anchor make it a non-starter despite Bardem's commanding lead turn. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/cannes-2010-review-alejandro-gonzalez-20100517/) ## Details - **Director:** Alejandro González Iñárritu - **Director:** Alejandro González Iñárritu - **Writer:** Alejandro González Iñárritu, Armando Bo, Nicolás Giacobone - **Story:** Alejandro González Iñárritu - **Cinematography:** Rodrigo Prieto - **Editor:** Stephen Mirrione - **Music:** Gustavo Santaolalla - **Production design:** Brigitte Broch - **Costume design:** Paco Delgado - **Producer:** Fernando Bovaira, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Jon Kilik - **Cast:** Javier Bardem as Uxbal; Maricel Álvarez as Marambra; Hanaa Bouchaib as Ana; Guillermo Estrella as Mateo; Eduard Fernández as Tito; Cheikh Ndiaye as Ekweme; Diaryatou Daff as Ige; Cheng Taishen as Hai - **Runtime:** 2h 28m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 28 December 2010 - **Genres:** Drama - **Box office:** $25 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygyeEOcKGWM ## Where to watch in the US - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: CH, FR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 2011: Best Actor (nominated); Best International Feature Film (nominated) - International Submission to the Academy Awards 2011: International Submission to the Academy Awards (nominated) ## If you liked this - *Ikiru* (1952), Fi1m 92: Kurosawa’s clerk is told he is dying and finds one thing worth doing; quieter, wiser. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/ikiru.md) - *Dirty Pretty Things* (2002): London’s undocumented workers keep a hotel running; the same underground economy, with a pulse. - *Amores Perros* (2000), Fi1m 85: Iñárritu’s first film, three Mexico City stories colliding; the energy this one lacks. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/amores-perros.md) - *Rosetta* (1999): The Dardennes follow a girl who needs a job, and never once look away. - *The Death of Mr. Lazarescu* (2005): A Bucharest pensioner is passed from hospital to hospital; bleak, funny and exact. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/biutiful