A Spanish family man who survives on small-time cons finds out he only has a few months to live.

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Uxbal never knew his own father and is raising his two children alone in a seedy neighborhood of Barcelona, after his trashy alcoholic wife sleeps with his brother. The latter is scamming to get compensation for their father's grave, which was moved to make room for a supermarket. Uxbal oversees Chinese workers who make fake brand handbags and the Senegalese hucksters who sell them on the street. His mundane life takes a vicious turn when he finds out he has cancer and only a few months to live. But things are going to get even worse...

Intolerable misery, cheap poetic scenes, an embarrassing description of a couple whose relationship is going downhill (as one of them slaps their 7-year-old) and the life of a man with agonizing cancer (complete with bloody urine), Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu's Biutiful is both depressing and nauseating. By giving awards to this type of pontificating auteur cinema - Best Actor to Javier Bardem - the Cannes Film Festival has long since lost all credibility in the eyes of the public.