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"A change is as good as a rest" seems to have been the ethos utilised by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu with his latest release Biutiful (2010), recently nominated for ‘Best Foreign Film’ at this year’s upcoming Academy Awards.

Dropping the multinational, parallel narrative structure of past films Babel (2006), 21 Grams (2003) and his acclaimed debut feature Amores Perros (2000), Iñárritu cements the developments of Biutiful solely within the multicultural flats and factories of suburban Barcelona, this time focusing almost entirely upon a single character, sickly single father Uxbal (Javier Bardem).

Much of the post Cannes/pre Oscar discussion regarding Biutiful has been in relation to the performance of Javier Bardem in the lead role - for which he has just received a nomination for 'Best Actor' at this year's 83rd Academy Awards - and rightly so. Despite impressive early collaborations with Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar in High Heels (1991) and Live Flesh (1997), it...

Abrazos Ratos (Broken Embraces) Directed by Pedro Almodovar After Live Flesh, All About My Mother and Volver, director Pedro Almodóvar and his muse Penelope Cruz unite for a fourth time with Broken Embraces, a film about film-making. Broken Embraces is a film within a film that jumps back and forth between past and present and evokes genres as far apart as noir and melodrama. Sugar coated on top are enough film references waiting to be spotted that is sure to put a smile on Quentin Tarantino's face. Only Almodovar's references are at times too easily recognizable, art imitating art, and in case you didn't catch it the first time, he's sure to have his characters name off each movie title for you. In one of the more interesting subplots, a young filmmaker stalks his stepmother (Penelope Cruz), hoping to expose her affair. His character is a caricature of Carl Boehm's Peeping Tom,...

Abrazos Ratos (Broken Embraces) Directed by Pedro Almodovar After Live Flesh, All About My Mother and Volver, director Pedro Almodóvar and his muse Penelope Cruz unite for a fourth time with Broken Embraces, a film about film-making. Broken Embraces is a film within a film that jumps back and forth between past and present and evokes genres as far apart as noir and melodrama. Sugar coated on top are enough film references waiting to be spotted that is sure to put a smile on Quentin Tarantino's face. Only Almodovar's references are at times too easily recognizable, art imitating art, and in case you didn't catch it the first time, he's sure to have his characters name off each movie title for you. In one of the more interesting subplots, a young filmmaker stalks his stepmother (Penelope Cruz), hoping to expose her affair. His character is a caricature of Carl Boehm's Peeping Tom,...