Official Competition review – Penélope Cruz on fire in delicious movie industry satire

It’s intelligent casting – and really entertaining – to place display goddess Penélope Cruz within the function of a famous person movie director. Cruz is most well-known for her working relationship with Pedro Almodóvar; usually she’s described as his muse – demeaningly, I believe. Nicely, with this playful satire of the film trade, Argentinian film-making duo Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat give her all the facility within the function of a borderline tyrannical auteur with a bonkers streak (assume Marina Abramović or perhaps even Björk). Sporting a large curly wig – produced from saucepan scourers, it appears to be like like – Cruz lets rip with a deliciously enjoyable efficiency.

She performs eccentric director Lola Cuevas, who’s beginning rehearsals for her new movie: an adaptation of a prize-winning novel concerning the rivalry between two brothers. Lola’s casting tactic is to rent two actors from totally different worlds within the leads. Enjoying the no-good drunken brother is Félix Rivero (Antonio Banderas), a worldwide film star with a mega-watt smile, however a bit dim within the brains division. Reverse him, revered stage actor Iván Torres (Oscar Martínez) takes the function of the strait-laced brother.

Their artistic processes couldn’t be extra totally different: Félix places menthol in his eyes earlier than scenes requiring him to cry. Iván believes in inhabiting a personality’s physique and soul. They will’t stand one another. Félix is clearly a diva, however Iván has his vanities too. There’s a superb scene the place Lola spies on him practising his fantasy Oscar acceptance speech (besides it’s a rejection speech, pompously renouncing such fripperies).

What Lola does is to pit the 2 actors in opposition to each other to get to the psychological reality of the piece. She’s obtained a merciless streak, and each males are at her mercy. To make them actually really feel the stress rehearsing one scene, she suspends a rock the scale of a backyard shed above their heads from a crane. I don’t consider for a second this is able to ever occur in actual life. However then, Official Competitors appears to be like extra like a satire of widespread perceptions concerning the trade somewhat than the trade itself.

It’s a really humorous movie, sending-up human absurdities with out being too imply. Cruz is a proficient comic, however she neatly performs it straight-ish right here. You by no means doubt for a second Lola is the true deal. Nor that Cruz is both.