It’s easy to forget that as well as directing The Father, which was stunning, Florian Zeller also directed The Son, which was not. With Bunker, his first film based on a screenplay written for the screen, he delivers a decidedly mixed bag: a domestic drama with two phenomenal central performances, wrapped in a satire of class division that is considerably less sophisticated than it thinks it is.

Javier Bardem plays Miguel Moreno, a celebrated architect who becomes embroiled in a feud with his neighbour after the latter knocks a hole in his garage wall to install a window overlooking Miguel’s garden. Penélope Cruz is even better as Sofia, Miguel’s wife, a professional magazine editor whose career is stagnating and who despairs at her husband’s increasingly obsessive fixation on this seemingly trivial dispute. At the same time, Miguel is approached by a wealthy client (Paul Dano) who wants him to design an underground bunker, in anticipation of the imminent societal collapse that’s just around the corner.

It’s a premise with considerable potential, yet Bunker attracts criticism for the broadness of its satire, which is as delicate as the sledgehammer that opens the film. The symbolism is obvious, and heightened performances recall Ruben Östlund’s work, The Square, in its mockery of the art world, and Triangle of Sadness in its treatment of class. The problem isn’t necessarily the lack of subtlety, but Zeller’s apparent reluctance to explore his ideas beyond their immediate implications. Dano’s fabulously wealthy client wants to retreat underground and protect himself from the masses, but the film never seriously interrogates the fear and entitlement underpinning that desire. The bunker itself, despite providing the film with its title and much of its thematic potential, feels oddly peripheral to the domestic drama.

That drama, however, is where Bunker comes alive. Bardem’s Miguel has constructed a romanticised image of his marriage, seemingly oblivious to the sacrifices Sofia has made and the professional obstacles she faces. His obsession becomes an expression of his own privilege, and a convenient distraction from the uncomfortable realities of his relationship. While he imagines increasingly elaborate threats from his neighbour, including the possibility of him killing the family cat, he fails to recognise what is happening under his own roof. The class and marital conflict begin to mirror one another: Miguel is preoccupied with protecting what belongs to him, whether that means his private garden or his idealised version of his life.

To his credit, Zeller coaxes two phenomenal, multilayered performances from his leads. Cruz and Bardem are superb, and the film’s centrepiece is a bitter, no-holds-barred argument between them that feels emotionally raw in a way the rest of the film rarely matches. It’s the strongest scene of the film, exposing years of resentment and unspoken grievances. Their performances bring genuine personality to a film that otherwise tends to reduce its characters to mouthpieces for its themes.

The supporting cast is less successful. Both Mark Gatiss and Stephen Graham are excellent actors, but here feel as though they have been transplanted into a foreign-language production. Graham, who usually finds the humanity in his rougher-around-the-edges characters, has little warmth, and his justification for installing the window is unconvincing. All it does is cement Bardem as the film’s voice of reason, even though it really feels as if the intention is for us to feel sympathy for Graham’s character.

The exception among the supporting case is Paul Dano, as Miguel’s Elon Musk-lite client. Dano relishes the opportunity to embody the terrifying moral emptiness of his character. In his scene, he spews so much meaningless rhetoric that it becomes strangely hypnotic, and Dano plays him with the self-absorption of someone who has mistaken his own wealth and influence for profound insight. He embodies the film’s most interesting idea, one that is left frustratingly unexplored: the wealthy retreating from a society they have helped shape, convinced that their money entitles them to escape its consequences.

Also, Sofia’s sense of displacement is a promising thread, particularly her deference towards superiors whose behaviour betrays their xenophobia. Yet this peters out almost as soon as it’s introduced. The final act compounds the problems, which is clearly staged to evoke a specific reaction, yet the way it’s presented is unnecessarily confusing. The decision to relegate the film’s one major action sequence to off-screen is a confounding choice. I get that the idea is to create a sense of ambiguity, but it feels more like a budgetary decision than an artistic choice.

Bunker is not a subtle film. There are flashes of real insight into the relationship between class, entitlement and domestic insecurity, and Cruz and Bardem make its central marriage compelling but Zeller’s insistence on spelling out his message leaves little room for ambiguity or genuine complexity. The result is a film whose ideas are far more fascinating than its execution.

Bunker is in UK cinemas on 19 February 2027