Javier Bardem stars in an amiable kind of Boys from the Blackstuff; he plays Santa, an angry guy laid off from a Spanish shipyard some years before and who now hangs around with his unemployed mates, all wondering if they will ever have a job or a life ever again. They mope around the bar which one guy has opened with his redundancy pay, nursing futile dreams, miseries, hopes and marital suspicions.

There is a tinge of whimsy and sentimentality to the film, but Bardem gives his best performance for some time: acidly droll, fiercely pessimistic and effortlessly commanding every scene that he's in.