In the satiric comedy OFFICIAL COMPETITION, Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas star as an auteur director and international action star, both with egos the size of Montana, who are hired by an aging wealthy businessman intent on financing a big, award-winning hit movie as a vanity project. The humor is pointed and wits are sharp, as wealth, egos, art and particularly movie-making come under the comic guns of Argentinian co-directors Gaston Duprat and Mariano Cohen in this hilarious Spanish-language satire.
As he turns 80, millionaire businessman Humberto Suarez (Jose Luis Gomez) decides he needs a monumentally big project to leave a lasting legacy. But what should be choose? A bridge designed by a famous architect bearing his name? A charitable foundation? No, a movie is more a sure thing – but a big, prestigious, award-winning one, one that is both a work of art and an enduring icon of cinema, helmed by a famous director and starring a famous movie star. Oh, sure, no problem with that.
The millionaire hires renowned auteur director Lola Cuevas (Penelope Cruz) to lead the project, and she casts international action movie megastar Félix Rivero (Antonio Banderas) along with the theater’s most revered stage actor Ivan Torres (Oscar Martinez), to play warring brothers in an adaptation of a international bestseller. The actors have never worked together, and in fact come from different worlds in acting schools of thought. They both bring big egos and wildly different ideas about acting to the project. Add in Cruz’s manipulative director, who eggs-on each and foments tensions, all to get the performance she wants, and clashes and comedy are guaranteed.
Penelope Cruz sports an impressively wild mane of frizzy red hair, hair that wears her more than the reverse, and lives in an aggressively modern glass-and-concrete mansion at the end of a long and winding road, both signals of the kind of ego we are dealing with here. The wealthy businessman financing this project only cares that the film is both prestigious and famous, and when the director shows him the book she wants to use for the film for his approval, the businessman confesses to not being much of a reader. After her meeting with the money, and having established she has free rein and a blank check, the director invites the two actors to her sparely-furnished mansion, to meet, to do cold readings and rehearse. That’s where the fun really begins.
Hollywood may love movies about movie-making but the Spanish- language comedy OFFICIAL COMPETITION is more a skewering and roast of the industry than a toast. This smart comedy actually focuses mostly on the pre-shoot preparation, as the director and actors explore the characters and rehearse, a period rarely depicted but rich in possibilities for conflict and comedy – with hilarious results. While the clash of acting theories and actors themselves gets special treatment, no aspect of the film industry really escapes OFFICIAL COMPETITION’s sly wit, as the skewering extends to the excesses of wealth, art pretensions, and battling big egos all around.
Of course, a movie about how actors act had to be catnip to the cast, and Penelope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martinez deliver terrific performances while seeming to having a great time. Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas especially seems to have great fun with the banquet of material in this twisty, smart comedy. The film is full of hilarious scenery-chewing, out-of-control one-up-manship, and ridiculous behavior as well as sharp observations and satire, as the two very different actors, one an internationally famous action movie star and the other a revered theater legend and professor, try to top each other, and the manipulative director stirs the pot.
The film delves into real acting techniques, and real disputes between schools of acting, which actually makes it all the funnier and sharper. The techniques of the director to get the performance she wants from her actors may seem extreme, even outlandish, but may not by as far out there as one might think, if some tales about film-making trickery might be believed.
We get scene after scene of craziness and humor that ranges from broad comedy to sly satire. No one and nothing escapes the knife-sharp swipes and biting humor of Argentine co-directors Gaston Duprat and Mariano Cohen. The directors, who previously co-directed “The Man Next Door,” “The Distinguished Citizen,” “My Masterpiece,” and “4×4,” thought there already were plenty of films about what can go awry while shooting a film but none on the absurdities that can happen as actors work through how they are going to play their part. And they do indeed find comic gold in that vein, although having this splendid cast is part of their lucky strike.
OFFICIAL COMPETITION is a lot of fun, but especially so if you appreciate the art of acting in the movies or theater. Each of the characters has his/her own agenda, including securing their legacy. The action star wants to prove he has serious acting chops, the theatrical star wants wider fame and to prove his ideas about acting are better, the director wants to win awards and prestige, and all are ready to do nearly anything to get what they want. While there is a kind of showdown between the two acting styles, the two actors never directly confront each other, instead each trying outdo the other, conspiring with the director against the other, or undermining what the other actor is doing. Meanwhile, Cruz’s director listens, but discretely pulls the strings.
If you like satire and behind the scenes of movie-making, the hard-hitting, hilarious OFFICIAL COMPETITION is a winner.
OFFICIAL COMPETITION, in Spanish with English subtitles, opens in theaters on Friday, July 1.
RATING: 3.5 out of 4 stars
