Sorogoyen’s Painful Portrait of Love and Regret

El Ser Querido, translated as “The Beloved”, is the latest film by Rodrigo Srogoyen, a pinnacle of the Iberian New Wave, and it encapsulates the director's artistic vision. Sorogoyen enjoys exploring the full potential of his cinematic artistry, playing with colours and sounds (or lack thereof), with aspect ratios, with music that explodes in targeted scenes, extreme close-ups and countless cinematic virtuosities.

The opening scene is a tour de force of about twenty minutes highlighting the volatile dynamic between the two protagonists: Esteban, a fifty-something alpha male accustomed to dominating his life, and Emilia, his thirty-something daughter, insecure but determined to stand up to a father unable to say the words "I am sorry". Sorogoyen moves their story forward, shifting tones and genres - from tender yearning to caustic rage, from farce to melodrama. El Ser Querido is his Day for Night, but cinema has become the theatre of new sensibilities and the stage for shifting power dynamics.

The film is underscored by Esteban and Emilia's inability to drop their mutual masks, nailing them to their roles precisely when they want to break out of them and find the path to a new reconciliation. In the dynamic between a self-centered director/father in search of redemption and his actress/daughter in search of herself, El Ser Querido brings to mind Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value. But here we are not in the cold and composed Scandinavia, here we are in a caliente land where feelings take on incandescent tones.

Javier Bardem is monumental in the role of Esteban, a Latin macho who discovers kindness and paternal duties late in life, knowing he has mortally wounded his “beloved” daughter, unwillingly repeating  the inadequate paternal model he was raised with. Esteban knows he made a tragic mistake, but he fails to see how his verbally violent and overbearing behaviour, on set as well as off, is unacceptable, especially in the contemporary, progressive Spain he has returned to. And neither the new Spain nor his daughter are willing to accept his old school chauvinism.

Sorogoyen immerses the camera in the gazes of Bardem and Victoria Luengo, who plays Emilia with fragility and reticence. Together they bring back the physical pleasure of cinematic viewing by creating anthology-worthy scenes (a breakfast with Esteban’s other children, a comical lunch scene set in the middle of the desert). El Ser Querido is metacinematic in showing us the many possible faces of human beings and the way we choose our roles according to the place, the circumstances, or the phase in our lives.

Esteban and Emilia hit each other hard and graze each other carefully, and inflict unintentional damage to one another – a damage they do not know how to repair. Ultimately, the central theme of El Ser Quierido is the realization that there are points of no return, and that love may not always be the answer, as it may not necessarily grant us forgiveness and acceptance from those we care about most.