Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz play a couple divided by a mysterious job offer in Florian Zeller’s overwrought thriller.
“Even the most beautiful love stories can start with a misunderstanding.”
Miguel (Javier Bardem) and Sofia (Penélope Cruz) Moreno have one of those stories – the kind that begins with misconception and triggers questions about deception, devotion, and the masks they wear. They met in Madrid, but they live in London, where Miguel is a world renowned architect known for his “minimalist, distinctly organic” style (“space and light are luxury” he says) and Sofia runs the translation department for a distinguished publishing house.
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Three things plague the Morenos. A secretive tech billionaire (later played by a Zuckerburg-esque Paul Dano) commissions a pharaonic project from Miguel to build a state of the art survival bunker (complete with hierarchical structure reinforcement, like oxygen controlled by vocal recognition) in the name of eschatological fear. Then there’s the matter of their neighbor Tony (Stephen Graham) who has knocked a hole through the wall separating their houses in order to build a window in the garage where he lives. Finally, Miguel suspects his wife might be attracted to the hot-shot novelist Jeremy (Patrick Schwarzneggar) she’s working with on his new book launch. The couple sees eye-to-eye on the neighbor issue, but their feelings on the other two threaten the fabric of their marriage.
As has been true in all of writer-director Florian Zeller’s films so far, morality-as-plot takes center stage through ethical scenarios and moments that amount to sheer symbolism. For instance, the recurring image of Odysseus, which frames the narrative cleverly as a lock-in hero’s journey. Or the sudden arrival of a long-awaited tarp that covers the hole in the wall and mirrors the avant-garde black rectangles the two observe at an art show earlier in the film. Or a moment in which an elderly woman in a public restroom tells Sofia to enjoy her beauty, because “it all goes by much faster than we think.”
If the black rectangles in the gallery have scenes painted beneath the impenetrable coats of black paint, what’s hiding behind the black mass of Tony’s tarp? What’s lurking through the hole in the garden wall? Should their poorer neighbor be able to build a window in the concrete that separates their houses? Is it fair to think said neighbour might’ve killed the family’s cat that’s been missing for 10 days? Is Miguel classist for prioritizing his privacy over his neighbor’s access to light? Should Miguel take the billionaire’s offer? These are the conundrums Zeller wants to put us in. But most of them aren’t compelling beyond a cursory thought.
Despite its better moments, Bunker’s true source of intrigue boils down to one simple thing: Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem married on screen. It’s like De Niro and Pacino sharing a scene for the first time in film history but more niche. They’ve played lovers before, as early as 1992, and long-separated couples, but in their collective 77 years of performing on camera, the married couple have never played an on-screen married couple.
They’ve been married for sixteen years to the Morenos’ seventeen years, both couples have two children, and both are upper class. It’s tempting to say they’re essentially playing themselves, and the performances are fascinating, especially Cruz’s – like a glimpse behind the curtain of one the world’s most enduring cinema power couples. The two feel intricately and intimately intertwined, seemingly at ease expressing anything to one another, be it frustration or adoration or hushed disappointment. The experience is made by Cruz and Bardem in mundane routine, going to work events on each others’ arms, arguing about whose career thrust has dominated the family’s decisions, reminiscing on the way they used to sleep all tangled up when they were young.
The film is well-designed by production designer Alain Bainée – who imagines the Moreno’s house like the dark side of Nick Cave’s Ghosteen – and nicely captured by cinematographer Ben Smithard, but the creative work across departments is at a stubborn (and, in this case, deflating) European slow-cinema low.
Bunker is a significant bounce-back from The Son but not up to par with Zeller’s debut, The Father, which made an empathetic and harrowing psychological mystery maze out of dementia and won Anthony Hopkins his second Oscar. Outside of Cruz and Bardem’s memorable performances, Zeller’s third feature is a tame parable, overpregnant with thematic tension that often fizzles out.
