‘Mondays’ to try art-house route

Spanish screen heartthrob Javier Bardem grew a beard and added a few pounds for “Mondays in the Sun,” in which he plays the ringleader of a band of former shipyard workers whose lives are upended when their plant is shut down and their jobs are exported to Asia.

A critical and box office hit in Spain last year, the film swept the country’s Goya awards (the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars), including honors for best picture, Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s direction and Bardem’s performance as lead actor.

But a controversy erupted when Spain chose “Mondays in the Sun” as the country’s official entry in the Academy Awards, snubbing Pedro Almodovar’s “Talk to Her,” which went on to win the Oscar for best original screenplay. “Mondays in the Sun” was nominated but lost the foreign-language Oscar to “Nowhere in Africa” from Germany.

On Friday, Lions Gate Films will roll out “Mondays in the Sun” in Los Angeles and New York, then add 15 to 20 cities Aug. 8. Lions Gate officials said they plan to open the film in art-house theaters before attempting to cross over to a wider audience, including the significant Latino market. “If this were a Mexican film, we would probably go after them right from the beginning,” Tom Ortenberg said. “But [since it’s] Spanish, I think the initial audience would be the more traditional American art-house audience, and we hope to expand from there.”

American audiences got their first look at Bardem in “Before Night Falls” as the persecuted Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas. He recently appeared in “The Dancer Upstairs,” John Malkovich’s feature directing debut.