Official Competition

Official Competition

Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas star as two egomaniacs commissioned by a millionaire to make a movie together in this sharp comedy skewering wealth, art, and pride.

Having surveyed his legacy and finding it lacking in prestige, an octogenarian millionaire pharmaceutical tycoon (José Luis Gómez) decides to finance a great work of cinema. He purchases the rights to a Nobel Prize–winning novel about sibling rivalry and entrusts the property to enigmatic auteur Lola Cuevas (Penélope Cruz).

A visionary conceptualist with a penchant for offscreen theatrics and micromanagement, Lola casts as her embattled co-leads a pair of veteran thespians who couldn’t be less alike: Iván Torres (Oscar Martínez) is a revered educator and legend of the stage much concerned with ethics and artistry, while Félix Rivero (Antonio Banderas) is a glamorous global star known mostly for brainless, bombastic entertainments. Awash in egomania and deliciously absurd behind-the-scenes hi-jinx, Argentine writer-directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat’s Official Competition is an ingenious, icy satire. Martínez deftly reveals the childish wounds underlying Iván’s high ideals, while Banderas utilizes his star power to craft a portrait of a man consumed by his own celebrity. But it’s Cruz, sporting a magnificent cloud of ginger curls, who becomes the film’s anchor as a master manipulator looking on as her grand scheme spirals out of control. In Spanish with English subtitles.