If I can impart some worldly advice from the trenches of the corporate world: if you’re ever approached by a company that refers to itself as a “family,” start walking away. Quickly. Particularly if that seemingly warm and generous overture is being extended by Blanco (Javier Bardem), the self-described “father” of an industrial grade scale manufacturer in a small Spanish town, who views his employees as his “children,” and where there’s no problem too small that he won’t endeavor to fix out of his apparent concern for them. “Family” is often a neat bit of HR, corporate culture spin that masks toxic behaviors behind the image of a benevolent, close-knit organization. And as those under Blanco will soon find out, when things get tough, the company’s motto — Hard Work. Balance. Loyalty. — only applies in one direction.
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“The Good Boss,” a film as sardonic as its title, plays out over the course of a slow-burning week-from-hell for Blanco, the head of Básculas Blanco. Shortlisted for a local Business Excellence award, Blanco rallies everyone at the company to prepare for a surprise inspection from the awards jury. But it’s going to take more than a bit of elbow grease and polish to get the factory in tip-top shape. José (Óscar de la Fuente), armed with a bullhorn and an endless well of anger, has set up a one-man camp across the street from the factory doors to protest his recent firing from the company. Blanco’s longtime friend and production manager Miralles (Manolo Solo) is screwing up fundamental parts of his job as he tries to deal with his marriage that’s falling apart, and with his colleague, Khaled (Tarik Rmili), moving in on his territory in more ways than he realizes. And then there’s Liliana (Almudena Amor), a young intern that Blanco starts preparing for his inevitable sexual conquest, only to be upended when the power dynamic between them that he thought he controlled slips out of his hands.
As an increasingly harried Blanco tries to get his ship in order, we start to see what differentiates him from being simply an ineffectual leader to a particularly malicious one. Taking Miralles out one evening to try and get his mind off his wife by encouraging him to sleep with one of the other interns (unsurprisingly, they all happen to be female), Blanco advises him to compartmentalize by placing the good and bad things in his life in different mental “drawers.” Blanco’s ability to split personal relationships from professional ambitions is a clear window into how he is able to hug his employees with one hand while stabbing them in the back when they are no longer necessary with the other. It’s a lesson that everyone around Blanco finds out eventually.
Delighting in hitting its barn door-sized targets, “The Good Boss” works best when writer/director Fernando León de Aranoa uses a subtler hand to dismantle the illusion of solidarity between employer and employee. When the film shifts to broader comedy — particularly in the second half when Blanco’s decisions come home to roost — the script’s satiric punch loses some of its sting. Thankfully, in his third collaboration with Aranoa following “Mondays In The Sun” and “Loving Pablo,” Bardem’s terrifically focused and devilish performance as the pompadoured Blanco keeps the episodic structure of “The Good Boss” rolling along even if the film’s tonal level isn’t always weighted evenly. The actor gives Blanco an almost sociopathic unflappability as the screws keep turning, with a silver-tongued response ready for any situation, and a ruthlessness that slowly uncoils like a snake.
Even if unbalanced, the script by Aranoa leaves no opportunity for cynicism untouched. Even Adela (Sonia Almarcha), Blanco’s stoically suffering wife, endures the knowledge that her husband uses the revolving door of the intern pool to find his next mistress, but accepts the trade-off of a comfortable, affluent lifestyle and ownership of an expensive women’s clothing boutique that no one ever appears to shop in. But Adela is also one of the few people in Blanco’s orbit who has the power to call him out. A centerpiece dinner sequence shows Blanco’s true colors, as he whines that “employees are never happy” and starts to mythologize his own Horatio Alger-esque origins until Adela pointedly reminds him that all he did was inherit the business from this father.
That same father once told Blanco that “sometimes you have to trick the scale to get the exact weight.” This is as close to a business philosophy that Blanco would ever care to admit and it underlines Aranoa’s own view of the corporate mindset under capitalism: that employees will forever be disadvantaged as employers will do all they can to keep the balance in their favor. It’s an easy metaphor, but it gives “The Good Boss” an edgy resonance that’s hard to shake. [B]
“The Good Boss” hits select theaters on August 26.
