"Bunker" confirms we still have a social inequality problem The film starring Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem is in competition at Venice83

After bringing two of his three theatrical works about family to the big screen — The Father and The Son — French author Florian Zeller turns his attention to the project of Bunker, the story of an architect and his publisher wife who must navigate a marital crisis and a particularly enticing yet ethically questionable job offer made to the husband.

For the film, which premiered in competition at Venice83, Zeller broke the chain of adaptations that would have brought his stage projects to the screen. For now, at least, the play The Mother remains outside the trilogy — which is somewhat ironic, given that it was actually the first to be performed before an audience, all the way back in 2010.

Even though Bunker has no theatrical roots, Zeller's hand as a playwright is unmistakable. And while it is not a remake, the director and screenwriter has stated that the subject matter was largely inspired by the 2010 Argentine film The Man Next Door, directed by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat. This influence is perceptible not only through the presence of Penélope Cruz — who starred in their 2022 film Official Competition — but also through the tragicomic tone it establishes.

A bitter humour that runs through the couple's love story and into the film's discourse on social class — from the new neighbour determined to build a window overlooking their garden, to the story of a billionaire who insists that the character played by Javier Bardem build him the titular bunker.

The film's two narrative threads inevitably converge and overlap. Whether or not the co-protagonist accepts the job is not merely a professional matter — it is a moral expression of the change the man has undergone over the years, a change that shapes his relationship with his wife Sofia. Having often bent their lives around his career, and with a prestigious award potentially opening more and more significant doors for him, the quote and the expectations laid before Miguel will be crucial in determining what kind of person he has become, how he wants to be remembered, and what he is not willing to give up.

In this case, it comes down to a pile of money — the same kind he offers his neighbour (Stephen Graham) to resolve the matter of the proverbial window overlooking the courtyard, which would expose the family to unwanted eyes. "In the end, it all comes down to that," Sofia observes, disillusioned, every time her husband ensures that money is too powerful a card to play in order to get things to go his way.

But when the architect finds himself confronted with the greatest social disparity of his career — the construction of a luxury shelter for a man who, rather than investing in safeguarding the future, is interested only in preserving himself — things get serious. Miguel must decide whether or not to sell his soul to the modern-day pharaohs, choosing between serving their interests and holding on to his own integrity.

Bunker's overarching social theme is not limited to the unbridgeable gap between Miguel and Sofia's family and the billionaire — it becomes more grounded when brought back to the narrative strand in which they are the well-off ones, set against the evident hardship of Graham's character. Combined with the billionaire question, this makes for a clear, direct argument without too many rough edges, favouring clarity over depth and laying all the elements on the table in stripped-down form for the audience — with an ending that is also slightly marred by rhetoric. This works in favour of the film's balance, even if it loses some nuance along the way, tackling a subject that anchors Bunker firmly in the present: the film is certainly not the most original of works, but it shows us with precision the world we are living in today.