DIRECTORS: Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat
CAST: Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, Oscar Martínez, José Luis Gómez, Pilar Castro, Irene Escolar, Manolo Solo, Carlos Hipólito, Nagore Aranburu, Koldo Olabarri, Juan Grandinetti
RUNNING TIME: 115 mins
CERTIFICATE: 15
BASICALLY…: A filmmaker (Cruz) rehearses her new film with a pair of volatile actors (Banderas and Martínez)…
NOW FOR THE REVIEW…
Whenever there’s a movie about making a movie, it’s almost always set during the actual production – so it’s a nice change of pace to see a film like Official Competition be set almost entirely during the crucial rehearsal phase of pre-production. For Argentinian duo directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, it’s also a fresh opportunity to skewer the egomaniacal personalities that have been assigned with shaping a film from infancy, in an often hilarious satire of the creative process which should ring all too true for anyone who’s had to deal with overinflated egos within this particular industry.
As mentioned, Official Competition is about the developmental process of a film, specifically one that has been brought to life by aging pharmaceutical titan Humberto Suárez (José Luis Gómez), who is eager to leave something behind that people will remember him for. Paying an extortionate amount for the rights to a Nobel Prize-winning book – despite having no interest in actually reading it – Humberto hires acclaimed arthouse filmmaker Lola Cuevas (Penélope Cruz) to direct and craft the script, which is about two brothers who come to blows after a tragic drunk-driving incident. Lola ends up casting two very different actors to play the brothers: popular movie star Félix Rivero (Antonio Banderas), and respected stage veteran Iván Torres (Oscar Martínez), both of whom have very different approaches to their craft, and therefore can’t stand each other from the start. As Lola attempts to unite her two actors together for a series of rehearsals, all three egos begin butting heads with one another, threatening to undo the dynamic before it’s even officially begun.
What makes Official Competition stand out from other movie-making satires like Tropic Thunder, The Player or Adaptation is how ironically artistic it feels. The film is primarily a three-hander between Cruz, Banderas and Martínez, set in a large reserved performing space with minimal props and obscenely modernist décor, while Cruz’s Lola indulges in unconventional methods designed to create a consistent sense of unease (some of her most ludicrously extreme examples including hanging a five-ton boulder over her actors as they recite dialogue, and destroying some of their awards in a grinder while they are wrapped together head to toe in cling film). The satire comes from how, despite these characters’ insistence on their dedication to the craft, it is all fuelled by their own vanity, as a means to prove only to themselves that they are the most bravura, daring and eccentric artists in the world, when in fact they are really just pretentious, condescending dimwits who are desperately out of touch with their own art. Even the supposedly level-headed Iván is rather monstrous in his ego-driven snobbery, putting down not just the types of movies that made Félix popular but also the audiences that watch them, and even imagining an acceptance speech where he refuses his fictional award by blasting the system in a way that makes him feel unique among the rest. It’s frightfully sharp in its satire, poking the elitist artsy-fartsy figure in all of their most tender spots, while also self-consciously styling itself as exactly the kind of self-important arthouse project that it is making fun of.
The film has a wicked sense of humour, sometimes treading into pitch-black territory, as Cohn and Duprat (who also co-wrote the screenplay with the latter’s brother Andrés Duprat) offer a deadpan look at these overly arthouse types and their overexaggerated methods which, rather surprisingly, feels accessible for more universal audiences. There are very funny sequences that delight in how absurd these people are, not to mention extraordinarily petty and cruel; one is mostly comprised of Banderas and Martínez just swapping venomous insults with each other that become less mature with every passing syllable, and another involves a plethora of microphones and several make-out sessions with extremely uncomfortable squelching sound effects. The filmmaking duo take every advantage of the oddball humour they’ve embedded into their sprawling narrative, while the lead trio of performances – including a drier-than-normal turn by Penélope Cruz – are excellent at capturing the overwhelming pretension that is clearly being targeted, with Banderas in particular having a lot of fun playing into elements of his own star persona here.
Beyond a coda which feels like it stretches itself a bit too far, both in length and in plausibility, Official Competition is a movie-making satire that manages to expose the deep artificiality of so-called “artists”, and has devilish fun while doing so. Also, where else are you going to find a film this year wherein Penélope Cruz, with a massive wig and a Flash t-shirt, doing the floss dance alone for no apparent reason?
SO, TO SUM UP…
Official Competition is a sharp-toothed satire of the pretentious arthouse sect of the film industry, focusing itself hardest on the ego-driven personalities who could not be more out of touch with their own art, and with its devilish sense of humour often manages to achieve its goals through hilariously overexaggerated scenarios, and a trio of fine-tuned performances leading the cause.
