There’s a certain kind of film about film-making that fully buys into the magic and mystery; that devours the dream factory narrative and delivers a warm embrace of a movie, channelling a message about the transformative power of cinema. Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist is one example; so, in its lo-fi way, is Son of Rambow. And Singin’ in the Rain, for all the sprinkling of behind-the-camera cynicism, is a classic of the kind. Official Competition is none of these. Rather than a love letter to the cinematic arts, this very funny Spanish-language satire, starring Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas, is more of a poison pen jab to the jugular. It dismantles the lofty ambitions of cinema as great, important and significant, a monument on the cultural landscape. Instead, it shows us art for ego’s sake, and it has a lot of wickedly spiteful fun doing so.
The film opens with a slow-panning shot across the 80th birthday present haul of pharmaceuticals billionaire Don Humberto (José Luis Gómez). A lifesize ceramic collie, a painting of a sad clown, a gun, a massage chair: Humberto surveys it all with displeasure, his waxily well-preserved face creasing into a frown. “How do they see me?” he demands of the craven assistant dancing attendance a cautiously respectful distance away (the extravagant shifts in focus between the two during this exchange emphasise just how far removed Humberto is from the rest of the world). The billionaire decides that he needs to reframe his legacy. And how better to launder a tainted reputation than by bankrolling a piece of great cinema?
To this end, a hot literary novel is bought (Humberto is more impressed by the massive price tag attached to the rights than he is by the content of a book he never actually bothers to read) and a team of top talent is assembled. Lola Cuevas (Cruz) is the Cannes Palme d’Or-winning director with an electrical storm of red curls and a highly unconventional way of working. Two stars are cast in the lead roles of brothers who are violently at odds but bound together by blood. Félix Rivero (Banderas) is a global superstar, draped in the trappings of celebrity and success. Iván Torres (Oscar Martínez) is a luminary of the theatre who prizes the craft above all else. Both, in their own way, are great actors. Both take an immediate and visceral dislike to each other.
The Argentinian directing duo Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn (who co-wrote the screenplay of Official Competition with Andrés Duprat) have a fascination with battling male egos: previous films include The Man Next Door (2009), a story of the spiralling conflict between two Buenos Aires neighbours triggered by a disagreement over a party wall. Territory is at stake here too, as Félix and Iván jostle for Lola’s approval during the increasingly wacky rehearsal process that makes up the main body of the film. Duprat and Cohn fill the set – the headquarters of Humberto’s empire, a grand but soulless modernist temple to wealth – with mirrors, the better for these preening, self-regarding egotists to admire themselves.
But for all the considerable, if at times slightly overstretched entertainment value of watching Félix and Iván trade petty micro-aggressions and status flexes, it is Cruz, fiercely deadpan and utterly bonkers, who steals the film. Autocratic, exacting and strung as tightly as a banjo, Lola suspends boulders over her actors to fine-tune the authenticity of their emotional response, and uses an industrial metal grinder for an exercise in “ego”.
With its blend of scabrous honesty and self-skewering silliness, this may be the most perceptive film about the movie-making business since Tom DiCillo’s Living in Oblivion.
In cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema
