"Official Competition" is quasi meta-comedy of sorts from the directorial team of Mariano Cohn and Gaston Duprat, that follows the trials and peculiar tribulations of the creation of a high-prestige, festival-centric drama called "Rivalry." The film within the film is financed by a restless octogenarian millionaire, Humberto Suarez (Jose Luis Gomez), wanting to leave his name on something of lasting value -- he first considers paying for a bridge somewhere in Spain before he lands on the film concept -- the production is cobbled together on the basis of his saying he only wants "the best."
Enter renowned filmmaker Lola Cuevas (Penelope Cruz), whose first film, "The Inverted Rain," created a firestorm of attention some years before, and a pair of A-list Spanish actors, Ivan Torres (Oscar Martinez), the serious artiste, legendary for his performances, if not beloved; and the redoubtable Felix Rivero (Antonio Banderas), a box-office bonanza, who has won countless awards (including, as he proudly displays, a pair of Golden Globes), en route to his outstanding popularity.
Naturally, the two men loathe each other: Ivan finds Felix reprehensible and vulgar, far too concerned with his audience and not enough his character (in one early scene, after Lola has asked the actors about the characters' backstory, Ivan digs deep into the imagined past, while Felix contends all he needs to do is read the little words off the page); Felix grows to despise the snooty pretensions of the venerable Ivan, who sneers at his success as if it's meaningless.
Between the two, we have the batty Lola, herself a committed and deeply pretentious auteur, who tasks her lead actors with such exercises as performing a crucial scene while underneath a giant boulder hanging precariously from a crane only a couple of feet above their heads, and Saran-wrapping the two of them tightly close together before having them suffer in tandem at her oddball manipulations.
It's certainly a subject ripe for satire (if not already pretty well covered): The film they're making, an adaptation of a dreadful sounding novel about a pair of rival brothers who end up falling in love with the same prostitute, does suggest the kind of airy, high-stakes drama that often fulfills studios' prestige docket come awards time. As the trio engage in this sort of ongoing psychological warfare, pulling ever-more apocalyptic stunts on one another, the tension builds into a ludicrous moment of violence (well set up, it must be said, by an early, seemingly non sequitur scene) that seemingly puts an endpoint to their mutual flagellations.
The structure is vaguely idiosyncratic, with small, well-rendered dalliances -- one scene consists entirely of Lola, standing in her bedroom in thought, attempting to floss; another has Ivan and his wife listening to an LP of a performance artist making "dirty" background noise, before their reverie is interrupted by a neighbor hammering a nail into the wall -- that are intended to slowly accumulate toward our understanding of these difficult characters. The tone is also vaguely off-beat, eschewing direct comedy bits (save for a cringe moment or two) in favor of more esoteric stylings. For all of its gestures to the contrary, however, it results in a fairly rudimentary observation about the necessity of insincerity in a business whose art requires an enormous amount of money, and the ever-precarious balancing of ego, to produce.
As well appointed as it is (most of it takes place in an enormous, museum-like institute owned by the pharmaceutical company whose enormous profits so endowed Senor Suarez as to be able to finance this operation), I would have to say it's also not terribly clever: Most of the twists and turns are easily guessed, a disappointment that dulls its otherwise impressive sheen. None of this takes away from the performances of the power trio, which are all fabulous (Cruz and Banderas, in particular, take to their roles with appreciable relish), which is unsurprising, given their pedigrees, but one wishes their work had been in greater service than to present an obviousness that has neither the weight nor the depth to do much damage. It's a satire that wants to go for the jugular, but instead just scratches your cheek.