Direction: Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn
Country: Spain / Argentina
The pair of Argentinean directors, Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, made ten films together, with the heavily awarded The Distinguished Citizen (2016) as a standout. Their newest work, Official Competition, is a satirical spoof structured around the rehearsals for the shooting of a film financed by a bored stiff billionaire businessman.
Even if not always surprising, and playing a bit too long for my taste, the film revealed to be more engaging than I was expecting. A very confident Penelope Cruz appears in top form as a lesbian avant-garde director who knows what she wants. Her investment in the film is matched by Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martinez, who play talented awarded actors with huge egos and different levels of ambition.
The film delves into complex relationships in cinema, usually hidden from the public, as they happen behind the scenes. And because we have fine experienced actors playing actors and directors, the whole thing makes even more sense, and some truth lurks from behind the wild and funny absurdity of the scenes.
The directors, borrowing the minimalist scenarios of Lars Von Trier’s Dogville and Manderlay for a bit, openly address rivalries, hypocrisy, banalities, and occasionally improper behavior during the process of an artistic creation. This Competition is a pitch-perfect joke that, at times, breaks up the vibes with unevenly inspired sketches. However, it never runs totally out of steam.
