On balance, Spanish film set in factory is good fun

The Good Boss Cast: Javier Bardem, Manolo Solo, Almudena Amor Director: Fernando León de Aranoa Duration: 1 h 59 m The Good Boss opens Aug. 26 in Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, Kingston and Sudbury, and Sept. 2 in Montreal, with other cities to follow.

Javier Bardem’s character in The Good Boss works in a metaphor factory.

I mean, yes, the Blanco Scales company produces devices that measure and weigh everything from peaches to cattle. But the business is just a backdrop for the social commentary in Spanish writer-director Fernando León de Aranoa’s new dark comedy. The plant could have made any kind of widget. But the scales, arbiters of justice, symbols of balance and harmony, were clearly too good an analogy to pass up.

In fact, if the film wanted to dive even deeper into allegory, Blanco Scales would have a side business in extinguishers for putting out fires, a horticultural division that designs topiary labyrinths, and a quarry producing quicksand.

Bardem plays Mr. Blanco, second-generation CEO of Blanco Scales. He’s proud of his company’s reputation, as evidenced by the wall of awards just off his bedroom at home. The display has a single blank space, already spotlit, for the business prize he expects to receive from the local government, just as soon as its prize committee visits his factory.

Ah, but no workplace is perfect, is it? Blanco has just had to make some cuts, and one former employee (Óscar de la Fuente) isn’t happy about being let go. He sets up camp on public land just outside the factory gates, and raises a stink.

Things aren’t exactly rosy on the inside either. Longtime right-hand-man Miralles (Manolo Solo) has started screwing up, and confides in his boss that he’s distracted because he fears his wife is having an affair. Then there’s Liliana (Almudena Amor), the new intern. Blanco says he treats his employees like the children he never had, but the way he looks at her is certainly not paternal. She’s also a Libra — naturally.

The Good Boss was Spain’s International Feature submission to the Oscars last year; my clever way of telling you it has subtitles. It’s fun watching Blanco spin his wheels ever faster as he tries to keep up with the messy business of human relations in the workplace. And the longer it goes on, the more we realize that he might not be the beneficent employer he so clearly believes himself to be.

Whether a critique of Spain’s modern capitalist socialist system or just an excuse to watch Bardem’s character come apart at the well-tailored seams, The Good Boss delivers some fun laughs and more than a little thoughtful commentary. It’s not a perfect film — the ending feels a little weak, the status a little too quo ante — but it is, on balance, a success.