Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, a cinematic love story

This Tuesday, Bunker, directed by Florian Zeller, premieres at the Venice Film Festival. The drama follows a married couple whose relationship is tested when the husband, an architect, agrees to take on a controversial project. Zeller wrote the film with Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem — the Oscar-winning Spanish actors are also married in real life — in mind.

Bunker is the ninth film featuring both Cruz and Bardem, and the fifth in which they have scenes together. Here is a look back at those collaborations.

‘Jamón, jamón’ (1992)

Their first film together was directed by Bigas Luna, which is why the couple later named their daughter Luna. It was the movie that launched both actors to fame, although Bardem had already built up experience in TV roles. In one scene, after his character cuts his finger while slicing a ham, the pair trade insults and flirtation:

“You’re a pig.”

“And you’re a fine piece of ham,” Bardem’s character replies, smacking Cruz’s character on the backside. “You and I are never going to be friends, huh? The only thing we can do is fuck.”

“You’re disgusting!”

Years later, Bardem reflected on the experience in EL PAÍS: “Had the shoot and Bigas’s way of working not been so enjoyable, perhaps neither I, nor Jordi [Mollà], nor Penélope would have carried on.” He also explained how he landed the role in what became a landmark of Spanish cinema: “Bigas chose me for my Iberian brutality. He needed a counterweight to Jordi Mollà’s character.”

In August 2020, meanwhile, Penélope Cruz posted an interview from those years on Instagram. “How to destroy a plot in less than a minute!!” she joked about her younger self, recounting step by step what happens in the movie.

‘Love Can Seriously Damage Your Health’ (1996)

One of Manuel Gómez Pereira’s finest sophisticated comedies, the film stars Penélope Cruz as a Beatles-obsessed young woman who is later played as an adult by Ana Belén. Bardem appears only briefly as a hospital orderly, meaning the pair never appear on screen together.

‘Live Flesh’ (1997)

Penélope Cruz made her first appearance in Pedro Almodóvar’s cinematic universe with a small role as Isabel, a young sex worker who gives birth to the film’s protagonist, played by Liberto Rabal, aboard a city bus on Christmas Eve 1970. The bus is driven by Álex Angulo. In a curious twist, the woman who stops the vehicle and helps deliver the baby is played by Pilar Bardem, who would later become Cruz’s mother-in-law in real life. Javier Bardem, meanwhile, plays David, a level-headed police officer in the section of the film set in the 1990s.

‘Don’t Tempt Me’ (2001)

Another film with Penélope Cruz in a leading role in which you could easily miss Javier Bardem if you blink. His appearance was so brief that he was not even credited, although his character did have a name: Tony Graco.

‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ (2008)

This is where the love story began. And the unwitting matchmaker was Woody Allen, during one of his ventures into Spain. While filming Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the male members of the cast and crew teased Bardem because he was the object of desire of Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson and Penélope Cruz’s characters.

“I joked around with Rebecca and Scarlett, but I kept my distance from Penélope [who played his ex-wife],” Bardem recalled during a conversation at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. “Like when you like a girl in school and you don’t approach her.”

That lasted until the final day of shooting. “That day we filmed our kiss. We kissed, and kept kissing, and when we realized it, the crew had left.”

That was the start of their relationship. “That kiss isn’t in the film and Woody sent us the sequence as a wedding present [in 2010].”

The romantic comedy-drama brought Cruz not only love, but also an Oscar.

‘The Counselor’ (2013)

In this Ridley Scott thriller, written by Cormac McCarthy, Bardem and Cruz play two characters who are central to the plot, but did not have any scenes together. The link between them is the film’s protagonist, a lawyer played by Michael Fassbender.

‘Loving Pablo’ (2017)

By then a married couple and parents, Bardem and Cruz were finally reunited on screen in a project directed by Fernando León de Aranoa. Bardem played Pablo Escobar, the notorious Colombian drug lord, while Cruz portrayed journalist Virginia Vallejo, with whom Escobar had a romantic relationship.

“In Loving Pablo, Penélope loved the creative process, even though she hated my character,” Bardem said of the film.

Cruz admitted the role took an emotional toll on her. “I knew it would affect me and that we would go to very ugly and unpleasant emotional places. I couldn’t wait to finish because it left my body in shock. Your mind knows it’s fiction, but part of you is exposed to a very intense level of stress. There’s always a part you can’t control, and it affects you.”

The film was shot in English, with both actors performing in Colombian accents.

‘Everybody Knows’ (2018)

In this drama by Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi, Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz — who was attached to the project from the start — once again play former partners, though this time theirs is a relationship marked by affection and mutual respect. Cruz had been attached to the project from its earliest stages.

“I was constantly worried about her well-being because, for four months, she had to live through the emotional journey of a mother whose daughter has been kidnapped over the course of three days,” Bardem said.

The actress recalled: “I want to work with directors who take risks. When Farhadi, whose work I love, called and told me he was going to write for me, I was blown away. Asghar is very special, with such sensitivity… You want to give everything. One day I ended up in an ambulance after portraying a panic attack. When I got out, he hugged me, asked for another take, and I gladly gave it. It has been the most difficult role of my career.”

‘Bunker’ (2026)

Florian Zeller, the writer-director of The Father and The Son, both adapted from his stage plays, cast Bardem and Cruz in his third feature film. For the first time, the pair play a married couple. Bardem stars as an architect who agrees to a controversial commission to build a survival bunker for a tech billionaire, a decision that prompts his wife to question their relationship.

Zeller told EL PAÍS during filming in January that he had written the screenplay specifically for Cruz and Bardem, and chose to shoot the film in Madrid, where they live.

“It has been an intense, honest and beautiful experience. I truly love them and admire them deeply,” Zeller said. “They have been fearless. We explored intimate, emotional territory, and they were very brave to do it as a couple, because it isn’t easy. But, it has been one of the most joyful, intense and emotionally rewarding experiences of my life. Both are extraordinary actors, without a doubt, but they are also beautiful people.”

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