The Beloved – Mein liebster Mensch

Esteban Martínez, celebrated director and enfant terrible of the film scene, unexpectedly offers his estranged daughter Emilia a part in his latest project. The two have not spoken for thirteen years. And Emilia, herself an actor without success so far, does not know whether her father truly needs her or is only seeking her forgiveness. But she says yes. And travels with him to the scorching desert, where Esteban is shooting an elaborate historical epic about Spain’s colonial past. Soon, however, the shoot becomes the stage for old wounds that both would rather forget.

A man who indicts the violence of history rules his own set with the same ruthlessness: therein lies the bitter irony of Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s “The Beloved – Mein liebster Mensch”. The Spanish filmmaker is interested in how power arises from closeness and how quickly care tips over into control. Between long, almost unbearably long conversations and the father’s outbursts of rage, the film shifts its perspectives, even its aspect ratios: here cinema itself becomes an attempt to find the truth, and a refined way of hiding it behind many tricks. Javier Bardem is the film’s centre of gravity. He plays this macho artist as a wounded predator. “The Beloved – Mein liebster Mensch” is a painful family drama that asks whether two people, despite deep old wounds, can truly find their way back to one another.