Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz Play a Marriage on the Brink in ‘Bunker’

It’s been thirty-four years since Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem first met on the set of the film Jamón, Jamón (1992). Reunited on the set of Vicki Christina Barcelona (2008), they’ve been married since 2010—nearly as long as the Morenos, the couple they portray in Florian Zeller’s new movie Bunker, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival this week. During the opening scene, at a dinner amongst friends, someone asks Cruz’s character, Sofia, how they’ve managed that long: “I think the best way to hold onto things is to treat them as fragile,” she replies, “Acting like something is unbreakable is the fastest way to break it.”

There’s quite a bit of breaking to follow in Bunker, an architecturally minded film that oscillates between the prospect of breaking new ground and the fear of having one’s home broken into. Sofia’s words have barely left her mouth before the film cuts to a shot of a sledgehammer blowing through a brick wall. Miguel (Bardem) is awoken by the sound; the wall forms the edge of the Morenos’ back garden, behind their glass-and-concrete manse in a gentrified London neighborhood. When Miguel goes down to see what the racket is, a menacing encounter between him and his new neighbor Toby (Stephen Graham) ensues. Toby is the kind of working class Londoner who’s been priced out of the area. His uncle left him a garage that abuts the Morenos’ property and he’s planning to convert it into a tiny home for himself, if only he can have a bit of natural light. Against Miguel’s wishes, the man plans to install a window that looks directly into the back of their house.

This sense of impending violation forms the backdrop to Bunker’s main story, in which marital and professional crises collide head-on. Miguel works as an architect, and after uprooting his family from Madrid a few years ago in pursuit of great success, it seems as though he has finally gotten his wish in the form of a prestigious British prize. But the award brings him some unwanted attention: Suddenly, a publicity-averse tech billionaire (played by Paul Dano) wants Miguel to build a bunker on his Hawaiian property, big enough for 30 people to live in comfortably for a year. When he tells Sofia, she asks disdainfully if he realizes “that genius is responsible for the app your daughter is addicted to.” Nevertheless, the mogul is very persistent, and Miguel finds himself seriously contemplating the offer. As his design partner (Mark Gatiss) notes at one point, this could be “a Pharaonic project” for him—”These people are the Pharaohs of our time, after all. Whether we like it or not.” Miguel finds himself drawing pyramids at his desk, then flipping them upside down, sketching out monumental works beneath the ground.

Why would a billionaire want to build a bunker? Miguel likes to use his clients’ concerns as the starting point of his designs, and following the logic of the ultra-elite adds comedic richness to a film that otherwise takes itself too seriously. To Zeller’s credit, he’s not afraid to poke fun at a billionaire tech class “so very afraid of a world they’re largely responsible for,” to quote Sofia again. When Miguel finally does meet his prospective client face-to-face, via a hastily set-up video call, Dano unleashes a tour-de-force performance of belligerent rhetorical tics and robotic self-assurance that brings to mind more than one famous tech mogul. While insisting that he’s “an optimist at heart,” the billionaire argues that “in our industry, we tend to game things out to infinity, so on one hand there’s utopia, and on the other hand, apocalypse,” before going on to say that “there’s too much wealth at the top of the pyramid.” He weighs the probability of social ruin above ecological catastrophe or biological warfare, before spinning off onto his “main concern” about how to ensure he retains control as master of the bunker among his guests: voice-activated oxygen supply?

Sadly, Dano’s zany cameo is too brief, and Bunker spends its long second act dwelling on melodramatic marital strife. Like an unstable building, the problem is in the foundations, and Miguel’s new project merely represents the latest crack in the wall. When Sofia left Madrid to follow him to London, she sacrificed her role as head of fiction at a publishing company, a job that’s now denied to her in her London office. Miguel doesn’t seem to notice her problems and Zeller’s film, which follows Miguel for the majority of the time, is occasionally guilty of the same. 

In the final scenes the bit of unwanted construction in the backyard, dropped into the film as a prelude, reemerges with much psychological insight. Miguel cannot merely enjoy his success without dwelling on the fear of it all being taken away. In that sense, he resembles his prospective client more than he, or Sofia, would like. Though Zeller’s direction is clunky and symbolism is often introduced with the subtlety of sledgehammer, Bunker taps into a very prevalent feeling today that, in a hostile world, no amount of security is enough. In a nail biting final scene, Miguel’s ability to protect the life he’s built in London is tested by outside forces, and having a neighbor like Toby turns out to be a blessing rather than a curse. Zeller’s point, of course, is that we should build windows instead of walls.