By John Paul Amaya
In The Good Boss, Blanco (Javier Bardem) reigns over his workforce with a seduce-and-destroy mindset, luring them in with his father’s medium-sized firm, Básculas Blanco (which Blanco inherited), one of Spain’s top producers of professional-grade scales, and then tossing them off when they no longer serve his requirements. His victims include the newly sacked José (Oscar de la Fuente), who has chosen to mount a one-person protest in front of the factory gates, as well as a slew of female interns who were hired for their beauty. Talk about tipping the scale; even when things are getting off-balance to win the committee award, Blanco is getting more than what he deserves on that weight.
Blanco is always preaching to his employees about having a robust and moral work ethic — the words “Effort, Equilibrium, Loyalty” are painted in red on the warehouse walls like agitprop for the capitalist patriarchy — but he’s willing to trample anyone to stay a power player in the world of perfectly calibrated measuring devices. As things start to fall apart, especially after longtime production manager and childhood friend Miralles (Manolo Solo) has a nervous breakdown after his marriage falls apart, Blanco must figure out how to save his job — not to mention his marriage, which may be jeopardized by his new intern, Liliana (Almudena Amor), who turns out to be the daughter of an old family friend. The scales are weighing down in each different situation that Blanco gets himself into.
Overall, the film’s direction was well written and directed by Fernando León de Aranoa, portraying the definition of blind justice, hierarchy, power, a philosophical sense of balance between the tipping scales of right and wrong. The film explores our sense of morality, responsibility, power, how our psychological behavior is constructed by our quote-on-quote status or class, and how we treat people as a result. The actors did an excellent job of taking on the characters. For example, Liliana, who first appears as a not-so-innocent victim falling into Blanco’s lecherous clutches, finally uses the romance to improve her career in The Good Boss. But that concept also feels a little misguided: even if Liliana manages to outwit Blanco in the end, she still needs to sleep with the boss to advance, which doesn’t feel like much of a step forward. There’s something slyly cynical about a film that critiques Blanco’s behavior while also applauding it, and León de Aranoa frequently reminds us that the delicate balance of power at Básculas Blanco can only be maintained by manipulation and cruel behavior.
The Good Boss exposes the director’s image of Spain, which he depicted two decades ago in the more optimistic working-class dramedy Mondays in the Sun, starring a younger, less-famous Bardem. Fernando León de Aranoa, who’s since broken into the mainstream with films like Loving Pablo and A Perfect Day, has acquired a refined storytelling method. Still, some might say he might have lost the vision of it, but alternatively, he may be seeing the world all too clearly for what it is, in which case we may be bound to serve under Blanco for a long time.
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