Spanish stars Cruz, Bardem play strained on-screen couple in new film

Spanish actor Javier Bardem and Spanish actress Penelope Cruz attend the photocall of "Bunker" presented in competition at the 83rd International Venice Film Festival. Married superstars Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem play a couple going through a mid-life crisis in their latest on-screen outing together in new film "Bunker" -- which they insisted bore no relation to their real lives. The Hollywood power duo, who got together after appearing in 2008's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona", play a wealthy married couple in London showing the strain of managing two careers in a city not their own. The movie by French director Florian Zeller, which premieres at the Venice Film Festival also serves as a fierce critique of Silicon Valley tech billionaires -- a theme that attracted the duo. Asked if anything in their on-screen characters resembled their real relationship, Bardem replied: "Nothing, We are really good at creating fiction and reality. Otherwise, we would not survive in this job." He plays a star architect who is offered a lucrative project to design an underground survival bunker for a Silicon Valley billionaire -- a story inspired by Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg constructing a compound on Hawaii, according to Zeller. Cruz said that she related to her character's contempt for tech billionaires behind social networks and artificial intelligence who imagine a future in which computers and robots have replaced humans. "I wonder, is there really some gene they're missing, which makes them lose their empathy?" she said. "My hope is that young people are actually beginning to realise they're being manipulated, and I hope they'll react because they're very intelligent."