‘The Beloved’ review: Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s muscular drama features a blistering Javier Bardem

Dir. Rodrigo Sorogoyen. Spain. 2026. 136mins

A celebrated film director with an acclaimed body of work and a reputation as a former hell-raiser, Esteban Martinez (Javier Bardem) casts his adult daughter Emilia (Victoria Luengoemilia) in his latest picture. Ostensibly, it’s an act of generosity, a boost to her stalled career. But there’s a hope, perhaps, that it might help defuse the tensions of their 13-year estrangement. The Beloved’s promiscuous approach to multiple aspect ratios, film stocks and shooting styles is initially rather distracting. But Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s superbly acted and dramatically compelling study of generational rifts, gender divides and the deep, unhealing scars in a father-daughter relationship has a muscular, propulsive momentum.

The unpredictable jolts in the film’s aspect ratio and its visual textures leave us on edge

This marks Sorogoyan’s first appearance in Cannes’ main Competition. His previous picture, the Denis Menochet-starring The Beasts, bowed in Cannes Premiere in 2022 and went on to win César and Goya awards, among others. More recently, Sorogoyan created and directed the 10-part television series The New Years, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2025. With its focus on a director father and an actress daughter, The Beloved may draw comparisons to last year’s Sentimental Value. But this is a very different beast: it’s fierce, unflinching and insightful on the power dynamics of a film set. Bardem’s name and his robust, sometimes intimidating performance should make this a title of interest for distributors looking for eye-catching arthouse titles.

Most notable in Sorogoyen’s stylistically ambitious and complex picture is the capricious approach to the cinematography. The film switches, seemingly at random, between black and white and colour. Cinematographer Alex De Pablo films on 65mm, 35mm, 16mm and 8mm film stock, as well as digital and mini DV. Sorogoyen also insisted on switching between multiple different lenses throughout the shoot.

The idea, presumably, is to evoke the multiple perspectives and versions of the truth that occur in a family dynamic. It’s a little disconcerting initially, with the first shift to black and white jolting us out of the picture somewhat. But the unpredictable changes to the film’s aspect ratio and its visual textures leave us on edge, mirroring the low-level stress of a film set governed by Esteban’s mercurial whims and demanding nature. The film’s use of sound is less showy but equally effective in conveying the idea of different ideas of the truth.

A brilliant tyrant, rumoured to have once head-butted a French star, Esteban is accustomed to being in control on set. It is his domain. It makes sense to him that if he is to reshape the narrative of his relationship with the daughter he abandoned, the movie set, where everything bends to his will, is the place to do it. But times, as his weary producer Marina (Marina Foïs) reminds him, have changed. And certain behaviours are no longer acceptable.

Sorogoyen’s gift for extended scenes is put to particularly good use here. The film opens with an electric 20-minute restaurant sequence, in which Esteban asks his daughter to star in his film, ’Desert’,  a period picture about Spain’s colonial history in Africa. Their discomfort is evident in Emilia’s guarded, tight-lipped smile and in the brittle silences; the anger that churns beneath it bubbles up like lava in Esteban’s hard, defensive stare when his daughter reminds him of his drinking and propensity for violence.

Later in the film, there’s another supremely uncomfortable and pivotal prolonged scene, in which Esteban’s frustration at his cast’s inability to nail a scene boils over into white-hot fury, with Emilia as its focus. Bardem is blistering, in this scene in particular and in a performance that ranks among his very best.