Official Competition
An out-of-touch investor hires an eccentric director and two mismatched actors to adapt a book he hasn't read. Hilarity ensues
In an age when the world’s one percent seem obsessed with hoarding wealth and depleting the Earth’s natural resources, there’s something strangely sweet – and then immediately hilariously cynical – at the start of this film about a film. Humberto Suárez wants to leave a legacy, and in a classically out-of-touch move, he buys the rights to a novel he has not read and finds the most artistic (read: eccentric) director his money can buy to adapt it. Lola Cuevas (Cruz) immediately brings in two actors with opposing sensibilities: beloved star Félix Rivero (Banderas) and master craftsman Iván Torres (Oscar Martínez). Rehearsals start, and start, and start – but will this grand film, an artistic swansong, ever be made?
Official Competition is – like the film-within-a-film it focuses on – overwhelmingly an actor’s picture. Duprat and Cohn trust their actors to carry the ridiculous and the mundane, and Cruz, Banderas and Martínez are at ease in this understated, fast-talking satire. Banderas in particular relishes undercutting the idea of celebrity in what could be a bombastic role; one scene at a turning point, with one camera on his face and another playing a simultaneous wide shot, proves him at the top of his game while losing none of Rivero’s own particular charm.
While Official Competition takes half its length to feel fully comfortable in a largely static presentation, its decided uncinematic air and droll observation on art, filmmaking and the tiny ways people compromise each other – or themselves – ultimately pays off.
Released 26 Aug by Curzon; certificate TBC