Official Competition: Film Satirizing Filmmaking Not Revelatory but Satisfying

By Karen Gordon

Rating: B

The self-absorbed, pretentious artist and the wealthy dilettante who sees prestige by investing in art are well-worn show business tropes.

The Spanish comedy/satire Official Competition plays on those clichés, and yet doesn’t really say anything new. But thanks to its A-list cast, led by Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas, it’s quite enjoyable.

The rich dilettante here is billionaire pharmaceutical tycoon Humberto Suárez (José Luis Gómez) who is feeling melancholy as he turns 80. He wants to leave a legacy that will make him more beloved, and so he decides to finance a movie with the best talent his money can buy.

To that end, he buys the rights to a Nobel Prize–winning book called Rivalry, which he doesn’t bother to read, and hires hotshot auteur Lola Cuevas (Cruz) to adapt and direct. To play the film’s leads — two brothers pulled apart by tragedy — Cuevas casts two of Spain’s most popular actors, Félix Rivero (Banderas) and Iván Torres (Oscar Martínez).

The two are polar opposites both in their personal lives and their working styles. Rivero is a rich, international movie superstar with a disdain for all the actorly deep-dive preparation. Torres, on the other hand, is a radical theatre director, actor and acting professor who is deeply into preparation.

Rivero is a showy playboy who loves all the perks of being a big star. Torres is in a solid marriage, to an earthy children’s author, and refuses any privileges or comforts that being a famous actor would entitle him to, including a large salary.

They’ve never worked together before, and Cuevas has cast them, hoping their very different styles and personalities will translate into a strong spark for the movie. She is a focused and demanding director with her own methods. She wants more from their script rehearsals than is usual, which ruffles feathers.

But she also has designed a series of exercises that, she tells them, are meant to break down their egos and bond them all for the good of the film. One of those involves wrapping the two together with clingfilm to the point where they can’t move.

Breaking egos down is another showbusiness cliché, and of course they’re all driven by ego; the film’s title is a perfect double entendre that echoes through the film. Can you make art without having an ego?

Even the serious Torres, with his dedication to his methods and distasted for Rivero’s style — who he sees as superficial — is stuck in his groove because of his ego. So, what happens when the three strong personalities-slash-very successful artists get together working towards the success of the film?

The best thing about Official Competition is the acting. The characters have been deliberately written as walking clichés, but never feel that way because of this exceptional cast. Cruz, Banderas and Martínez take their characters beyond the stereotypes, and are just plain wonderful to watch.

I never cease to be amazed by Cruz, who in every performance is subtle and effortless. Rivero is the cliché of a superficial movie actor, but in the flicker of an eye Banderas gives us insight into some of what motivates his him. It’s the same with Martínez as Torres. He is in many ways Rivero’s opposite, the solid, steady workman, but as the film goes on, he lets us see just enough of what’s behind that stoic determination.

The film has been put together by frequent collaborators: writer, Andrés Deprat, and co-directors Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn. They’ve made an intelligent, satirical comedy that leans on stereotypes and tropes about art and its perceived pretensions for comedy value. In the process they’re also asking questions about art, movies, and celebrity.

Did they intend to raise those questions? It’s hard to say. The film is a comedy that doesn’t seem to want to take itself too seriously, but its weakness is that it never really grapples with the questions that it raises. And that leaves the movie feeling a bit muddled.

Still, great characters, terrific acting, and some absurd circumstances make Official Competition an enjoyable movie.

Official Competition. Written by Andrés Duprat. Directed by Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn. Starring Penelope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, and Oscar Martínez. Opens in theatres, June 24.