San Francisco Frontiers - Spanish stars Cruz, Bardem play strained on-screen couple in new film

The Hollywood power duo, who got together after appearing in 2008's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona", play a wealthy married couple in London showing the strain of managing two careers in a city not their own.

The movie by French director Florian Zeller, which premieres at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday, also serves as a fierce critique of Silicon Valley tech billionaires -- a theme that attracted the duo.

Asked if anything in their on-screen characters resembled their real relationship, Bardem replied: "Nothing, We are really good at creating fiction and reality. Otherwise, we would not survive in this job."

He plays a star architect who is offered a lucrative project to design an underground survival bunker for a Silicon Valley billionaire -- a story inspired by Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg constructing a compound on Hawaii, according to Zeller.

Cruz said that she related to her character's contempt for tech billionaires behind social networks and artificial intelligence who imagine a future in which computers and robots have replaced humans.

"I wonder, is there really some gene they’re missing, which makes them lose their empathy?" she said.

"My hope is that young people are actually beginning to realise they’re being manipulated, and I hope they’ll react because they’re very intelligent."

Cruz said she and her husband, who have done around 10 films together in total, always had to find a balance between their work and family life.

"We both really love this profession. But it's true that there is a good balance in terms of how much you are speaking about work," she said.

The 52-year-old praised Zeller for his script, which also tackles themes from isolation to xenophobia, but also his role in directing the couple during the "big arguments in the movie and some of the emotional scenes.

"I'm very grateful to Florian because he was always watching us and always feeling and seeing everything, and without invading, he was a real protection for us in that way," she explained.

Cruz and Bardem last appeared on screen together in Iranian director Asghar Farhadi's "Everybody Knows" in 2018.

I.Rodriguez--SFF