Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem deliver a captivating performance in Bunker, a new film by director Florian Zeller, but the movie struggles to juggle its many thematic threads. The film, which screened at the London Film Festival, is set for general release on February 19.
A Marriage Under Strain
The story opens at a London restaurant, where literary editor Sofía (Cruz) and her starchitect husband Miguel (Bardem) explain to fellow diners why they fell for each other and how perfect their 17 years of married life has been. The tone shifts abruptly as a hole is pummelled through the garden wall of their covetable family home, suggesting a psycho neighbour intruder.
Enter multi-billionaire Andrew (Paul Dano, in a brief role), who wants Miguel to design a bunker to protect him from a feared apocalypse and the inevitable blood-letting of the super-rich. “I don’t want to end up with my head on a spike,” Andrew explains. Miguel’s partner Simon (Mark Gatiss) calls it a “pharoahonic project,” but Sofía is not convinced about her husband selling his soul for big bucks.
Themes That Overload
Sofía rails against a meaningless life where they have prioritised their careers, raging at her husband for being swayed by money more than her feelings. But the film soon reveals who smashed the viewing hole in their wall: Stephen Graham plays Toby, an unmoneyed neighbour quietly baring a grudge against the gentrification of his local area. Yet this is only partly the story, with another strand involving Patrick Schwarzenegger’s famed author, with whom Sofía becomes enamoured.
Bardem and Cruz create a delicious frisson of marital unease, while Graham’s screentime is sorely brief. A confident, unnerving directorial edge cuts through the domestic tension, but for all its prickly entertainment, the wagons can never quite be corralled into cohesive order. The film’s ending, however riveting, is tough to forgive for being yawningly on-the-nose.
