(2010, Spanish) A winter scene where it begins and ends: an owl spits up a hair ball before dying; a daughter touches her grandmother's diamond ring. A divorced father with custody of his two children, Uxbal (Javier Bardem) finds out he has terminal prostate cancer, metastasized into bones and liver, with a few months to live.

He's involved with a criminal organization, exploiting Chinese laborers and running a black-market with illegal Africans. His ex-wife Marambra (Maricel Álvarez), alcoholic and bipolar, wanted to have fun rather than be a mother; he has Lili, one of the Chinese with her own young child, take care of Ana (Hanaa Bouchar) and Mateo (Guillermo Estrella) while he's at work.

His brother Tito (Eduard Fernández), who owns a nightclub with girls having tits affixed on their ass, agrees to sell their father's grave in the cemetery and have the body cremated. In need of someone to look after his kids, Uxbal tries reconciling with his estranged spouse.

When Ekweme, one of his Africans arrested for selling drugs, gets deported back to Senegal, Uxbal, who has moved in with Marambra, arranges for Ekweme's wife Ige (Diaryatou Daff) and child to occupy his flat. The cop to whom he delivers bribes for his Chinese boss Hai reminds Uxbal that hungry people can be like tigers: "You're not Mother Teresa."

Anxious for his children's future welfare - visiting long-time friend Bea, who gives him keepsakes for the kids and exhorts him to put his affairs in order - Uxbal also anguishes over the deaths of two dozen people for whom he intended to make working conditions less onerous.

When Ana asks her father for help with her homework - the correct spelling of "beautiful" - Uxbal answers: "just the way it sounds." There's the sound of the sea and the wind in director/writer Alejandro González Iñárritu's bleak drama, offering only slight hope for his characters.

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Copyright © 2011 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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