Official Competition does this perfectly, setting up its two actors playing actors as diametric opposites - Oscar Martinez is the wanker and Antonio Banderas is the guy who believes acting is just saying your lines. They are both idiots, but what we want and hope and ultimately get is to see Martinez get his. There are multiple ways in which this happens, but the funniest and most satisfying is the scene in which he puts on an unlistenable record and sits down to explain to his wife the significance of the track, only to discover the "percussion" is actually their neighbour banging on the wall. That'll teach him to look for meaning in art.
Adding to the fun is that the director of the film within the film is sensationally bonkers, and is played brilliantly by Penelope Cruz. To extract maximum emotion from their performances, she does things like wrapping them up together with cling film so they're unable to move, then having their many awards statues crushed in front of them.
This is a fun movie. Fun is everywhere. The fun is so obvious. Some of the most fun I had was in watching the dance scenes. They are ridiculous, and so, so fun, particularly the one of Cruz attempting flossing. What they mean, I have no idea.
SHE SAW
The only thing more entertaining than watching Official Competition was the brief interlude during the viewing when Greg paused the film, frantically stripped down to his underwear, ran out onto the balcony, climbed a ladder and cleared the gutters, almost nude, in torrential rain. It was such an absurdly comical scene, it wouldn't have been out of place in the film itself, which is a wittily observed satire of actors and film-making. Where Antonio Banderas was satirising the acting process, Greg looked to be performing a parody of an incompetent homeowner.
I've never considered Antonio Banderas to be particularly funny, Puss in Boots notwithstanding. His comic timing in this film, however, is impeccable. He plays a version of himself: the quintessential blockbuster movie actor who's all charisma, little self-reflection or reverence for acting as an artistic endeavour, a womaniser and a disingenuous warrior for the endangered pink dolphin.
The film spends much of its time in the rehearsal room where Banderas' character Félix is preparing to star in a film about two rival brothers, directed by hotshot filmmaker Lola Cuevas (Penélope Cruz). Cruz too is luminous in this film, playing an eccentrically passionate director with very particular ideas of the performances she wants from her two actors and unconventional, frequently outlandish, ways of trying to get them to the "truth" of their characters.
The third lead is Iván (Oscar Martínez) who's the stereotypical serious actor - a student and teacher of the craft who likes to dig deep to find his character within. The film centres around these two very different, equally egocentric, actors competing to be the best while Lola, the director, plays them off against each other to heighten the tension and get them closer to the truth of the rivalry/disdain between the two brothers they're playing - which comes to a head just as principal photography is about to commence on the film.
It's directed by Argentinian filmmaking duo Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, who do an excellent job of at once skewering their own industry and genuinely exploring what it is to be an actor, what acting really is - are we all acting all the time? - and what constitutes art. It's at times very silly, as humans tend to be when we take ourselves too seriously, but Cruz, Banderas and Martinez are so pitch-perfect in these roles, it's almost as if they understand on a deep level "the truth" behind these characters. Or maybe Cohn and Duprat, like Lola Cuevas, made the actors rehearse their scenes under a precariously suspended giant rock, we'll never know.
Official Competition is in cinemas from Thursday.
