Barcelona reported a record number of visitors in 2010. Something like 9 million people visited the city, thanks in no small part to the 85 million Euros that the council paid to the producers of the last big movie set in BCN, Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
Unlike that film, which was basically about Spain’s holy trinity of cultural icons (La Sagrada Familia and Penelope Cruz’s tits) Biutiful stars are part of the city that the tourists, and the generalitat know are there, but would prefer to ignore. I guess the idea is to do for the city what Dirty Pretty Things did for London.
Yes, the film features plenty of immigrants doing shitty things to get by, but where I’ve always found Frears cinema condescending (I’m including The Queen in that), you get the sense that with Biutiful Iñarritu has done the legwork, researching the city to find real locations, real people on which to hang his story.
Oh and did I mention that Bardem’s character sees dead people? Cool huh?