Dir: Gaston Duprat, Mariano Cohn. Starring: Penelope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, Oscar Martinez, Jose Luis Gomez, Irene Escolar, Manolo Solo. 15, 114 minutes.
Is the film industry’s obsession with poking fun at its own excesses just another form of vanity? After the hundredth comedy about conceited artists and their many gluttonies (see: Judd Apatow’s painfully unfunny The Bubble), it all starts to feel a little like the dirtbag boyfriend who loves to apologise for how “messed up” he is, but never makes the slightest attempt to fix his behaviour. Gaston Duprat and Mariano Cohn’s Official Competition may be yet another satire on filmmaking, but it’s the rare iteration that’s nuanced enough to understand that self-awareness does not equal absolution.
