It’s clever casting – and very entertaining – to put screen goddess Penélope Cruz in the role of a superstar film director. Cruz is most famous for her working relationship with Pedro Almodóvar; often she’s described as his muse – demeaningly, I think. Well, with this playful satire of the movie industry, Argentinian film-making duo Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat give her all the power in the role of a borderline tyrannical auteur with a bonkers streak (think Marina Abramović or maybe even Björk). Wearing a massive curly wig – made from saucepan scourers, it looks like – Cruz lets rip with a deliciously fun performance.
She plays eccentric director Lola Cuevas, who is starting rehearsals for her new film: an adaptation of a prize-winning novel about the rivalry between two brothers. Lola’s casting tactic is to hire two actors from different worlds in the leads. Playing the no-good drunken brother is Félix Rivero (Antonio Banderas), a global movie star with a mega-watt smile, but a bit dim in the brains department. Opposite him, respected stage actor Iván Torres (Oscar Martínez) takes the role of the strait-laced brother.
Their creative processes couldn’t be more different: Félix puts menthol in his eyes before scenes requiring him to cry. Iván believes in inhabiting a character’s body and soul. They can’t stand each other. Félix is obviously a diva, but Iván has his vanities too. There’s a brilliant scene where Lola spies on him practising his fantasy Oscar acceptance speech (except it’s a rejection speech, pompously renouncing such fripperies).
What Lola does is to pit the two actors against one another to get to the psychological truth of the piece. She’s got a cruel streak, and both men are at her mercy. To make them really feel the tension rehearsing one scene, she suspends a rock the size of a garden shed above their heads from a crane. I don’t believe for a second this would ever happen in real life. But then, Official Competition looks more like a satire of common perceptions about the industry rather than the industry itself.
It’s a very funny film, sending-up human absurdities without being too mean. Cruz is a talented comedian, but she smartly plays it straight-ish here. You never doubt for a moment Lola is the real deal. Nor that Cruz is either.
• Official Competition is released on 26 August in cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema.
