Thirty-four years after presenting Jamón, jamón, by Bigas Luna, at the Venice Film Festival, the couple formed by Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz has returned to walk the red carpet of the Italian event for the premiere of Bunker, the new work by the French playwright and filmmaker Florian Zeller. This is the seventh time that the Spanish acting couple has shared the big screen. In this case, they play a married couple consisting of a successful architect and an editor. The couple lives in London, with their two daughters, in a privileged situation, a “comfort” that seems to have shattered the woman's existential well-being. This unstable situation is jolted by the appearance of a technology tycoon who offers the architect the construction of a bunker in Hawaii.

Last week I went to see Sorogoyen's new film, El ser querido, starring Javier Bardem and Vicky Luengo, which is about a renowned and controversial film director who calls his daughter, an actress with a stalled career who earns her living working as a waitress and with whom he has no contact, to offer her a role in the new film he wants to shoot in the Sahara. It seems that when Valor sentimental, by Joachim Trier, was released last year, Sorogoyen's blood ran cold: the film, winner of the Cannes Jury Grand Prix, is about a renowned film director, Gustav Borg, played by Stellan Skarsgård, who offers a role to his daughter Nora, with whom he has no relationship, for his new film project. I understand the fear.I will not write an article comparing both films, nor will I try to critique them; I just want to reflect on the fact that unites both titles in a more meaningful way. And forgive the spoiler, because one must start at the end: both Sorogoyen and Trier redeem the absent father. I mean: at the end of both films, repentant, sentimental, moved, and even shocked fathers appear to see their daughters there, acting so well, having turned that crazy project of filming together into a second chance that life has offered them. Both fathers are saved.Leaving the cinema, the first thing I thought about was what would have happened if instead of fathers they had been mothers. This was already explained very well by Begoña Gómez Urzaiz in Las abandonadoras: while an absent father who sees his children a couple of times a year and pays child support more or less regularly can come to be seen as a good parent, a mother who does the same is almost a criminal. How could a woman want to abandon her child? What kind of monstrosity is this? Maria Montessori, Joni Mitchell, Ingrid Bergman and so many others. The most interesting thing is that Gómez Urzaiz also reviews fictional mothers, such as Anna Karenina, Nora from A Doll's House or Carol by Patricia Highsmith, tracing a cultural archive of how we have imagined the mother who disappears. There is no redemption for Karenina, with her tragic suicide at the end. And as for Nora, with that final slam of the door, we applaud her for freeing herself without stopping ourselves from judging her. And faced with Carol, Gómez Urzaiz asks herself, with sincerity, how a mother can do that to her children.

Beyond the talent for orchestrating action scenes – in the film As bestas and the series Antidisturbios–, the filmmaker from Madrid Rodrigo Sorogoyen usually builds his sharp existential odysseys around intimate sequences loaded with dramatic density and attention to detail. Following this pattern, El ser querido opens with a lengthy and vibrant encounter between a father (Javier Bardem), a successful film director, and his daughter (Victoria Luengo), whom he hasn't seen in thirteen years and who offers her the leading role in his new film. In itself, this scene, filmed in close-ups from a distance, offers everything an demanding viewer could ask for: writing of the highest precision, eloquent silences, echoes of John Cassavetes and Ingmar Bergman, and a duo of actors in a state of grace.

2026 is by Victoria Luengo (Palma, 1990). After her first important role with Almodóvar (Amarga Navidad), came the premiere at Cannes of El ser querido, by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, where she plays Emilia, an actress the daughter of a famous director (Javier Bardem), who returns to Spain after many years in Hollywood and offers her a role in his new film. It is a meta-cinematographic drama with many moral twists that arrives in cinemas this Wednesday, August 26, a few weeks before the premiere in San Sebastian of Sants, Luengo's reunion with Mikel Gurrea, who already directed her in Suro.

With the permission of Pedro Almodóvar, the Spanish director most loved in France in recent times is surely Rodrigo Sorogoyen (Madrid, 1981), who just a few days ago received the Order of Arts and Letters from the French government and has triumphed in French cinemas with titles such as El reino or As bestas. The culmination of his love story with France is the participation in the Cannes competition of his new film, El ser querido, which premieres this Saturday both at the festival and in French cinemas, an unusual fact for a Spanish production that will not reach our country until August.

The 98th Academy Awards have crowned One battle after another like the big winner of the nightThe film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson gradually gained prominence throughout the ceremony, becoming the dominant name of the awards, which were marked by its overall success. The gala also featured musical numbers and some moments of protest, despite being rather tame and lacking in activism.

In the midst of promoting his new film, F1. The movie, in which he shares the bill with Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem has given an interview with the New York Times explaining some intimate details he doesn't usually talk about, such as his family. The actor has explained how the birth of his two children, Leo and Luna, impacted him and, especially, his wife, Penélope Cruz. "The pregnancy wasn't so bad. The depression that followed was. She wasn't able to talk about it; it was very new to her," he recalls.