Producer: Jaume Roures  Directors: Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat   Screenplay: Andrés Duprat, Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat   Cast: Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz, Oscar Martínez, Irene Escolar, Melina Matthews, Pilar Castro, José Luis Gómez, Manolo Solo, Nagore Aranburu, Koldo Olabarri and Juan Grandinetti   Distributor: IFC Films

Grade: B+

The movie business that’s the target of this vehicle for the husband-and-wife team of Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz might be the one in Spain, but the points it makes could easily apply to the industry anywhere.  Though it occasionally paints with a broad brush, “Official Competition” mostly employs sharp, biting strokes in exploring the human failings that are inherent to the artistic temperament. 

Like last year’s Oscar winner “Drive My Car,” it focuses on script readings and rehearsals rather than a finished play or film.  In the prologue mogul Humberto Suárez (José Luis Gómez), brooding over how he’ll be remembered on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, decides to fund something notable to burnish his reputation.  Thinking a bridge or building too ordinary and ephemeral, he decides to finance a film that will be recognized as a timeless classic.

So he has his lawyer purchase the rights to an acclaimed best-selling novel, which he doesn’t even bother to read, and hires director Lola Cuevas (Cruz), a celebrated auteur, to transform it into a cinematic masterpiece.  She writes the script, which focuses on two estranged brothers, and decides it would be a stroke of genius to cast dissimilar actors in the leads, believing their contrasting approaches will enhance the characters’ antipathy.  The older brother, responsible for his sibling’s imprisonment after a car crash that killed their parents, will be played by renowned stage actor/teacher Iván Torres (Oscar Martínez)—notable for his devotion to the craft of performance and his distaste for big-star celebrity. Félix Rivero (Banderas), the epitome of precisely the kind of big-budget pop stardom Torres loathes, will play the younger sibling, who blames his brother for his conviction.

The two actors express insincere respect for each other as they arrive at Lola’s expansive stone facility for the initial table readings, but the intensely serious, reflective Torres is obviously uneasy with Rivero’s nonchalant “say the lines” attitude and the latter reciprocates in kind, while Cuevas insists on their repeating even the simplest lines to get the precise intonation she desires.  It quickly becomes apparent that Felix is a celebrity while Iván considers himself an artist, but Rivero looks upon himself as no hack, and Torres is certainly not averse to recognition, but of his own peculiar sort: while dismissing the notion that his performance could win him an Oscar, he secretly prepares the speech he’d give in such an eventuality, one that would get a special kind of attention.  (Hint: think of George C. Scott or Marlon Brando.)

That’s only one of the clever bits that directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, along with Duprat’s brother Andrés, have contrived for the film.  Another involves a particularly nasty trick played by Félix to prove his acting ability to Iván, and a third an even nastier surprise Lola has for her stars to prove the unimportance of ego-boasting awards to true artists.  Yet another involves a suggestion Torres makes about how to complete the film at a time that catastrophe appears to have struck—which returns in a rather different form at the close.  There’s even a funny slapstick sequence featuring a huge plastic rock.

Things do go rather into overdrive in the final act, when things go extravagantly wrong at a party marking the start of actual shooting.  But even here the tone doesn’t descend into antic farce; the underpinnings of knowing commentary on the reality of the film business remain, and a closing wink indicates that the story is not yet over.

The screenplay is key here, of course, but the three leads are essential to realizing its virtues onscreen.  Banderas brings all his comic gifts to the table, using his panoply of shrugs, glances and frowns to make Rivero a veritable symbol of big-star chutzpah; he also puts across a sequence when a tiny touch to his cheek sends him into a paroxysm over his “instrument,” earning the biggest (if easiest) guffaws.  By contrast Martínez underplays with a perfect portrait of elegant pomposity tinged with insecurity.

The two make a fine pair of rivals, but without Cruz’s Lola their efforts wouldn’t be nearly as effective.  In her hands Cuevas may be eccentric and imperious, but she also comes across as somebody who knows what she’s doing; her manipulations aren’t frivolous, however absurd they might at first seem, and Cruz conveys her competence as well as her peculiarity.  She also responds with crisp efficiency—and a devilish smile—to lothario Rivero’s one ill-advised advance.  Among the rest of the cast, Gómez stands out as the soft-spoken but demanding mogul behind the entire enterprise.

One must also note the visual clarity of the film.  Alain Bainée’s production design makes the rehearsal space a modernist marvel, and cinematographer Arnau Valls Colomer uses it expertly to fashion images of often stunning impact.  At nearly two hours you might question whether Alberto del Campo could have sharpened the material a bit, and Judith Jáuregui’s score isn’t particularly memorable.  But overall the technical package is first-rate.

The movie business has always been a prime invitation for spoofing, and “Official Competition” is a sly, witty and perceptive take on the foibles of actors and filmmakers, with a trio of outstanding performances brilliantly complementing and supporting each other.