Title: Official Competition (Competencia Oficial)
Director: Gastòn Duprat, Mariano Cohn
Language: Spanish
Running time: 114’
The title of the movie Official Competition (Competencia Oficial) by Argentinian directors Gastòn Duprat and Mariano Cohn already foretells its state at the Venice Film Festival: in competition. A great satire about the making of a film itself, the title really reflects more the competition that sparks between the two male protagonists and that the director needs to tame in order to succeed.
Humberto Suàrez (José Luis Gomez) is a narcissistic pharmaceutical tycoon that wants to make sure his name is remembered for centuries to come. To celebrate his 80th birthday, he wants to leave a mark and decides he wants to produce a movie with the best of the best rather than to build a bridge in his own name and then gift it to the state. To fulfil his desire for immortality, he buys the rights to the Nobel-price book he hasn’t even read “Rivals” and hires the eccentric director Lola Cuévas (Penelope Cruz) to direct it. He asks her to find the best actors for the movie, and she calls Hollywood divo Félix Rivero (Antonio Banderas) and intellectual stage actor Ivàn Torres (Oscar Martìnez). The movie depicts the making of “Rivals,” really telling the absurd stories of the nine rehearsal before moving to filming. The scenes articulate with comic sketches of the three protagonists, underlining Lola’s eccentric way of preparing her actors, and the rivalry between the divo and the theatre actor.
Official Competition isn’t really a meta movie, even though it would fit the definition perfectly. It is a movie about making a movie, after all. However, this film really stands on the extremely funny gags that Lola, Félix and Ivàn engage in. We could really say that the movie really has its everything in the performance of its actors and in the dialogues. The two men act like children and really fulfil the stereotype of the kind of people they portray. They bicker all the time, in a continuous competition on which of the two actorial styles or ways of life is better. Lola is eccentric and weird, her rehearsal techniques are really something else (like the time she has them sit under a gigantic rock to help them learn how to build anxiety in their characters, only to tell them at the end of the rehearsal that the boulder was made of carton), but Penelope Cruz is really able to make her character seem the most normal woman in the world, which is what’s really hilarious about her. The movie is a comedy that doesn’t really try to have another meaning. At first I thought that there was something about the situation of the woman in the cinema industry, but at the end of the movie, during the press conference at the official competition, they themselves say that the movie doesn’t try to have any deeper meaning than what they can see depicted on the screen.
Official Competition is really a comedic movie about the making of a movie, not really much else. It exaggerates the stereotypes of the industry without any real criticism, just to build a funny satire on the topic. The whole movie is based on the actorial performances of the lead actors, which make it a movie not to miss if you’re down for a great laugh.
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