The Art of Artiness
Argentine directing duo of Duprat & Cohn last seen skewering class division in Buenos Aires takes its scalpel to the artistic process, just in time for a conversation about the ‘method’.
Official competition
Directors: Gastón Duprat & Mariano Cohn • Writers: Mariano Cohn, Andrés Duprat, Gastón Duprat
Starring: Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz, Oscar Martínez, José Luis Gómez, Manolo Solo
Spain/Argentina • 1hr 54mins
Opens Hong Kong Apr 28 • IIB
Grade: B+
The lamentations you’re hearing in the distance are the plaintive wails of Jared Leto as yet another creative type – in this case the Argentinian directing partners of Gastón Duprat & Mariano Cohn – shits all over the actorly process. Alright, to say Duprat and Cohn, along with Gastón’s brother and co-writer Andrés Duprat, are shitting on the Method quite as vehemently as Mads Mikkelsen and Sebastian Stan did recently is a bit of a reach. But Official Competition (Competencia oficial) has a great deal of snarky fun in a story about a pretentious “visionary” filmmaker herding a pair of rival actors through rehearsals for her adaptation of a Nobel winning novel.
Cohn and Duprat have done this kind of deconstruction of the privileged before, notably in The Distinguished Citizen, which debated the relative merits of “high” art and “trash” culture, and more recently in 4X4, about a petty criminal who breaks into a wealthy doctor’s SUV, who’s been robbed before and who’s had just about enough of this, thanks. These guys are really into playing with the cultural conflicts we’ve created for ourselves.
And doesn’t that look artistic?
So they’re back on the art beat here. After pharmaceutical mogul Humberto Suárez’s (José Luis Gómez) 80th birthday party, he’s struck by existential crisis: What, he wonders, will his legacy be after he dies? Fearing people are just going to remember him as some rich guy he decides he’s going to do something honourable and memorable. After dismissing the ideas of a bridge and a foundation, he charges his assistant with buying the rights to a critically acclaimed book, and hires equally acclaimed, cutting-edge director Lola Cuevas (Penélope Cruz) to do her thing. The book is about the lifelong rivalry between brothers, and so Lola decides exploring that tension through real life rival actors would be brilliant. She hires Iván Torres (Oscar Martínez), an ACTOR!, and Félix Rivero (Antonio Banderas), a lowly movie star.
So the trio moves into one of Suárez’s massive, post-modern minimalist conference centres and starts rehearsals. Félix, Lola and Ivan are ideological and emotional creatures, each dedicated to beliefs that frequently bleed into their work. Félix may be a global superstar but he harbours a deep, deep fear that no one really takes him seriously as an actor. Iván is a celebrated thespian but he’s also an asshole with a serious superiority complex and contempt for the mass audiences that have made Félix a star. Lola does her best to live up to the edgy, lesbian, maverick festival favourite image she leans into, but she’s an old-fashioned softie who develops tight bonds fast. As rehearsals go on and Lola’s “exercises” exploring character get more and more outrageous – she puts them under a boulder to channel fear, destroys prized possessions to eliminate ego and so on – the more life starts to imitate art, and Félix and Iván start to get a little too into their parts.
Those cherries she’s holding are a metaphor
Official Competition is a bit like Robert Altman’s The Player, or even Pang Ho-cheung’s Vulgaria in that the more you know about “the business” the more you’re going to find charm in its deadpan humour. But this isn’t a film with its head up its own ass. Cruz, Banderas and Argentinian veteran Martinez (he was the wealthy patriarch who made an employee take the fall in his son’s traffic accident in Wild Tales) are so pitch perfect they make the film entertaining and accessible for so-called outsiders. And even outsiders will wonder, given how much fun the cast is clearly having, what’s being drawn from reality. Between them, the leads have worked with the likes of Pedro Almodóvar, Asghar Farhadi, Ridley Scott, Stephen Frears, Carlos Saura, Neil Jordan, Terrence Malick, and Juan José Campanella – titans all, and likely possessed of their own, ahem, artistic processes that would make most of our eyes roll.
Whether it sticks the landing (which this does better than 4X4) is personal, and depends on how invested you get in these characters, if you see through their self-absorption, and how far you’re willing to go into silly town. Chances of getting carried along by Alain Bainée’s stellar production design, relative newcomer Wanda Morales’s stunning costume design (Cruz looks absolutely amazing as an Artiste! made manifest) and Arnau Valls Colomer’s cool, disconnecting cinematography are high, though. You almost don’t need the characters; the heightened physical space tells the story. This is witty and amusing, not hilarious, so if you’re looking for side-splitting go elsewhere. But really, taking a swipe at artsy types? Always a good time. DEK
Art imitating life imitating art… or something like that