Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas united by humour in Official Competition

What is artwork? Do awards make you a greater artist? Are blockbuster films just for pseudo-actors? These are some questions unleashed in Official Competition, a comedy starring Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez in a battle of egos.

Throughout the movie, directed by Argentinians Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, the lethal sin of self-importance is skilled with nice depth. It is felt from the start, when an previous businessman (José Luis Gómez) seeks to go away his mark on historical past by financing a movie about two brothers preventing to the demise directed by a famend filmmaker — regardless that he by no means learn the novel wherein it’s based mostly.

The director is Lola Cuevas (Cruz), a relentless lady with no filter, obsessed with movie right down to the smallest element, however with a quite unconventional method.

“She believes that her actors must suffer to get a better result,” Cruz mentioned in a latest interview from New York, the place the movie was proven on the Tribeca Festival forward of its theatrical launch on Friday within the US.

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“She’s a very peculiar character, very quirky, but that’s why she’s so fascinating. When I read it (I said) ‘how wonderful, how lucky to be able to play a person like that, a being with no filters who says everything she feels and thinks and doesn’t care what people think of her’”, the Academy Award-winning actress added.

Actors Penelope Cruz, left, and Antonio Banderas attend the premiere for “Official Competition” through the 2022 Tribeca Festival on Tuesday, June 14, 2022, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

One of Lola’s first jaw-dropping feedback on the movie is that “an artist without children has a great advantage, he can create freely, without fear. When there are children, there is panic.”

Cruz, who’s a mom of two, disagrees along with her character’s assertion.

“You can take (motherhood) into your work, for sure it’s a big injection to creativity. Even if you are much more tired all the time, it doesn’t matter, it’s worth it,” mentioned the actor, who not too long ago was acknowledged with Spain’s 2022 National Film Award for her contributions to the artwork.

In “Official Competition”, Lola summons two equally acknowledged however diametrically opposed actors: Iván Torres (Martínez), a really skilled Argentine who has his personal college, does theater and hates the misleading glitter of fame; and Félix Rivero (Banderas), a star of worldwide stature with many awards and blockbuster movies, however who tends to be late for rehearsals. The rigidity is current from the primary script studying and will increase however, secretly, little by little, Iván and Félix start to do issues that they be taught from the opposite, whereas attempting to exhibit their superiority.

“They are dangerous animals. They can destroy themselves in order to obtain the predominant position in that production,” mentioned Banderas in a video name from New York.

For the Spanish actor, one of many factors of the movie is that “you can see how easy it is for people to become what they criticize.” He has averted falling into the errors that Félix makes, regardless of having a world-renowned profession, exactly on account of assembly actors like his character in actual life.

“My career was built little by little,” mentioned Banderas. “I basically started in theater, which is very helpful, because theater confronts you with yourself very strongly every day, you have an audience that responds, or not, to whatever you’re doing, and you start analyzing yourself in a completely different way that cinema actors do. … I think it’s sometimes very dangerous when you have a very successful career very early.”

In Official Competition, Lola acts as a referee, but in addition as a sparring associate, inciting confrontation between the 2 actors — if the stress is actual, her movie will probably be higher, she thinks. One of the exams she places them by means of to fight their egos is the destruction of their awards, together with her personal Palm d’Or and Silver Lion.

“You can take that very seriously, you can just think that is a very real exercise to any human being just to break that kind of attachment that we have to objects, and those objects that they represent things that we obtain in life,” mentioned Banderas.

That was one among Cruz’s favourite scenes, together with one other wherein the director is alone on the ground speaking to herself by means of a plastic tube, insulting herself.

“I think it’s a very funny and pathetic moment, where you also see the lost girl she has inside,” mentioned Cruz, whose character sports activities massive purple, curly hair.

“It was a big statement,” she mentioned of of Lola’s look. “She’s not trying to hide herself, she wants people to see her, to look at her. She thinks she always has the most interesting things to say in the room. She is such an egomaniac.”

Coupled with the good personalities of the three primary characters, the movie, shot in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain, takes place in a cultural complicated whose gloomy and fashionable structure contrasts with the absurdity of the scenes, but in addition makes it really feel like a conceptual artwork efficiency.

“Being in those spaces brings up so many questions about art — What is wrong? What is right?,” mentioned Cruz. “Being in that space is like all that information was floating everywhere in the room”.

The capturing started in early 2020 and was reduce brief in March by the coronavirus pandemic. They had been in a position to resume it in September of that 12 months.

“The nice thing about this is that I see the movie now and I don’t remember what was shot in March and what was shot in September. I think we recovered the tone that we had when we left the movie … and luckily we didn’t lose inspiration,” mentioned Banderas.

Playing a director has solely fueled a spark that Cruz has since she was 16. The actor directed a documentary, 2016′s “Yo Soy Uno Entre Cien Mil,” in addition to two brief movies for Agent Provocateur, a lingerie model.

“It is something that I want to do for sure in my life,” Cruz mentioned. “I am preparing a documentary now that is gonna take me a few years, because it’s complicated and requires different treatments, different locations. It’s not an easy subject to approach. I need time to do it right,” she added, with out revealing any particulars.

Although they’ve recognized one another for about 30 years and take into account themselves mates, Official Competition”is the primary movie wherein Cruz and Banderas have quite a few scenes and dialogues collectively. Before, they’d shared small scenes in Pedro Almodóvar’s “Pain and Glory” and “I’m So Excited!”

“It was a pleasure and especially in a comedy world, although deep down it is a very thoughtful and complex film,” Banderas mentioned. “Seeing her create a character … that has nothing to do with her, that is so different from who she is, it was very beautiful.”