BY STEVE RAMOS

Javier Bardem

The face that represents Spanish cinema to moviegoers around the world belongs to veteran actor Javier Bardem. His are compassionate, world-weary features with a lifetime's worth of emotions behind his heavy-lidded eyes.

Bardem remains best known to American audiences for his Oscar-nominated performance as exiled Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas in the 2000 drama, Before Night Falls. This year he's already appeared in two feature films. In writer/director Fernando Leon de Aranoa's social drama Mondays in the Sun (Los Lunes al Sol), currently showing in art-house theaters across the country, Bardem plays an unemployed shipyard worker, Santa, a bitter man adjusting to the reality that globalization and Spain's economic progress means that his blue-collar skills are no longer needed in his native country.

Bardem also stars in John Malkovich's filmmaking debut, The Dancer Upstairs, just out on home video. Bardem plays Augustin Rejas, a police detective in a Latin American city who's in charge of finding a mysterious revolutionary on the verge of overturning the government.

Bardem's subtle performance matches perfectly with Malkovich's deliberately told thriller. You sense his heartfelt emotion in his on-screen character. You also feel it when you speak to him in person.

I last sat down with Bardem at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. On a balcony overlooking historic Main Street in Park City, Utah, Bardem talks about his preference for political stories, whether Before Night Falls, The Dancer Upstairs or his most recent film, Mondays in the Sun.

"Somebody said to me, a great screenwriter, although I won't mention his name, that every movie is political. Air Force One is political. It's dressed as an action movie, but it has a huge, hard, solid message to the world about states and about the intervention of states in the world. Ninety percent of the movies are political, but I think in the case of my movies, they take circumstances and political situations to talk about human beings. The message is so clear and so specific: Let's not forget about ourselves as a community, a group. I'm nobody without you, and you're nobody without me. We have to help each other to be heard." -- Steve Ramos

E-mail Steve Ramos

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