Films about filmmaking often seem destined for film lovers only, to the detriment of everyone else. There are of course some great exceptions to that rule, such as Truffaut’s Day for Night, Fellini’s 8 ½ and Godard’s Contempt — or, this past year, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, which was a hit in Cannes that wound up winning an Oscar.

Still, the genre is a tough nut to crack and tends to yield the same old tales of tyrannical directors, insecure actors, overtaxed crew members and corrupt producers. Some, but not all, of those tropes are present in Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s behind-the-scenes drama The Beloved (El Ser Querido), which manages to add a few welcome twists to the formula. It also dishes out a heavy dose of on-set malaise that can be so unbearable to watch that at times you want to yell out “Cut!’

Sorogoyen is something of a master of malaise, as evidenced by his taut 2023 thriller, The Beasts, about a French couple relocating to a Spanish town, where they’re so unwelcome they become pariahs and, eventually, prey. He also created and directed the well-praised TV series The New Years, which followed a couple through times both good and bad in episodes shifting from carnal passion to extreme discomfort.

The Beloved often consists of the latter, courtesy of its two-time Oscar-winning fictional filmmaker, Esteban Martínez (Bardem), who returns home after years of exile in New York to direct a period piece set in the Spanish Sahara — a contested territory in North Africa, now known as Western Sahara, that Spain occupied until the 1970s.

The catch, in what already seems like a risky project, is that Martínez has decided to cast his own estranged daughter, Emilia (Victoria Luengo), in the lead role, even if she’s only acted in a few forgettable TV shows. If the Trier movie immediately comes to mind here, well, it’s because both films mine similar material, focusing on an esteemed but volatile director trying to make amends with a child/actress he neglected for too long.

But Sorogoyen’s movie is a different beast in many ways, beginning with how he teases out the tension and withholds key pieces of information, stretching our unease to a breaking point. The first 15 minutes of The Beloved are a prime example of that, following Martínez as he shows up at a restaurant for an encounter with Emilia. We have no idea what their relationship is at first — are they former lovers? frenemies? partners in crime? — until we learn not only that Martínez abandoned Emila after birth, but that he’s returned to his homeland to ask her to star in his ambitious new movie.

The drama then shifts to the film shoot itself, which takes place on the deserts and shores of the Canary Islands, standing in for the Sahara circa 1932. At that point, Sorogoyen and DP Álex de Pablo start switching up techniques and film formats — from the intimate handheld close-ups of the opening sequence to epic vistas mixing color with black-and-white footage — capturing the wind-strewn landscapes where Martínez and his crew will be shooting for the coming weeks.  

The on-set conflict quickly ratchets up under the director’s domineering presence, which feels harmless at first, like he’s just another celebrated auteur with a big ego trying to make it through a tough production. But as the shoot progresses, he winds up turning into a total dictator, culminating in a standout scene during which his treatment of cast and crew becomes excruciatingly — and somewhat hilariously — abusive.

Bardem is terrific in the role of a hardened filmmaker with a shady past and shitty reputation who still has talent to burn, hoping to redeem his relationship with Emilia as they collaborate for the first time. Martínez initially turns on the charm with his daughter, encouraging her as an actress despite her lack of experience. But when that fails to win her over, he starts to lose his cool, chastizing everyone — including his longtime French producer, Marina (Marina Foïs, who co-starred in The Beasts) — and turning Emilia completely against him.

Why this happens is where The Beloved feels a little too familiar. In a nutshell, Emilia resents her dad for decades of poor behavior, including a drinking problem that Martínez, who’s been sober for several years now, seems incapable of acknowledging. We’ve seen it all before — the director with the dark past; the daughter who may never forgive him — and Sorogoyen doesn’t quite manage to make it emotional, even if Luengo (The Room Next Door) is powerful as a girl who can’t let go of a lifelong grudge.

Another issue involves the fictional movie being shot, which is called Desert and seems to be about the perils of Spanish colonialism, yet remains disconnected to all the shenanigans going on behind the scenes. The parallel stories are never tied together, to the point that we lose interest in the project Martínez seems to be risking his whole career on, not to mention his already tenuous relationship with Emilia.

Even if its elements don’t always gel, The Beloved offers another prime showcase for Sorogoyen’s art of unease, as well as for Bardem’s talent for playing men who can fly off the handle at any moment (Martínez is like Anton Chigurh strapped to a director’s chair). Godard, whose own on-set antics were on display last year in Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, famously wrote that “the cinema is truth 24 times a second.” This tense outing proves that the truth sometimes comes out once you stop rolling.