Official Competition

This intriguing black comedy from Spain pits Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez as a daring director who casts antagonistic actors in her latest film.

“Official Competition” aims a lot of satiric barbs, pointed in all sorts of direction.

It’s a darkly comedic send-up of the rich and entitled, movie stars, directors and the entire filmmaking process. It’s the sort of movie where just as soon as you think one party is going to be excused from the swarm of stings, a volley is fired in their direction the very next scene.

Not since Robert Altman’s “The Player” can I think of a movie that takes such a dim view of its own profession and the people who endeavor in it.

It starts with Humberto Suarez (José Luis Gómez), a pharmaceuticals billionaire who has just turned 80 and is obsessed with putting his mark on the world before his death. After mulling financing a bridge, he settles on producing a movie. It will be the best film possible, so he pays a fortune for the rights to a Nobel-winning book, hires the hottest director in the world, who in turn insists on the two best actors around.

What is the book about? Humberto cannot be bothered to read it. With people like him, it’s having his name on the thing that matters, not what it is — as long as it’s “the best.”

Penélope Cruz is Lola Cuevas, the brash, youngish director selected. Outfitted with a wild mop of red curls, Lola is strong-minded, willful and projects an aura of absolute artistic authority. She’s known for her crazy motivational tactics with her cast — for this project, she rigs a crane with a massive boulder swaying above two chairs for her actors to rehearse, certain death creaking in the wind a few inches above their heads.

Those actors are Félix Rivero, a Tom Cruise-esque international movie star played by Antonio Banderas, and Iván Torres (Oscar Martínez), who has mostly worked on the stage and is widely regarded as the master thespian of his generation. Lola’s notion is that by casting such diametrically opposed performers as the leads in her movie, where they will play antagonistic brothers, the natural tension between their styles and outlook on life will fuel the dramaturgy.

The story — screenplay by Mariano Cohn, Gastón Duprat and Andrés Duprat, with the first two also directing — takes place over the nine days of allotted rehearsal before production. These are held at Humberto’s mansion, a sprawling modern architecture monstrosity that looks a cross between a museum empty of art or people and a science fiction cult headquarters.

Much of the early fun-poking is aimed at Félix, as you might expect. He’s an aging playboy, an egotist and narcissist, someone consumed with his status as a film star. He’s constantly primping and working out, always wears stylish clothes even for table reads and lends a (tiny) portion of his time to ridiculous look-good charity work like saving the pink dolphin.

Iván, who’s probably about 15 or 20 years older, makes a big show of being the dignified one, wearing owlish glasses and scruffy beard, with a frumpy body he drapes carelessly in shapeless, colorless clothing. He regards Félix as an affront to his craft, one he teaches to the next generation of thespians — instructing them that if they don’t each feel like they’re the best actor in the room, they should leave.

The movie nudges us to admire Iván and snicker at Félix, but as we soon learn both are more similar in their fragile egos than either would care to admit. Lola wanders by a bathroom and overhears Iván practicing an Academy Award speech for the role he’s about to play — just so he can reject the Oscar.

So now the audience wanders into Lola’s corner, and we empathize with this brilliant woman trying to get great performances out of two celebrated but ridiculous men. She has fun in a rehearsal where she challenges Felix and Iván to kiss the female lead (Irene Escolar) — who is also Humberto’s daughter — and then gives her own, much more effective audition.

But then we start to see through Lola’s charade. She enjoys lording her power over others, treating her assistants and creative team as punching bags, and seems to delight in debasing her two leading men — not for creative reasons, but just to put them in their place. At one point she has them wrapped up helplessly in cellophane while she attacks the physical manifestations of their profession by… well, you’ll see.

There’s one scene I found funny, and telling. Lola lies alone in a huge empty room with the hose from a vacuum curled around her, one end in her ear and the other in her mouth as she hurls insults at herself through the distorted ersatz megaphone. Like a lot of people who project supreme confidence, Lola enjoys needling others because it distracts from her own self-loathing.

“Official Competition” isn’t what you’d call a laugh-out-loud sort of comedy. It’s more in the wry humor mold where you twist the corner of your mouth and nod knowingly.

It has a lot of funny and revealing things to say about how movies are made, where any sort of despicable or bizarre behavior is coddled as long as it’s proclaimed to be part of someone’s cherished “process.”

The three leads give specific, slightly exaggerated performances that never fail to entertain. Banderas has the showiest role and makes the most of it, giving us a man who on some level knows he’s a shallow twerp but is determined to stay in the spotlight while doing it.

The movie gets a little weird and off-track in the last act, as Felix makes a ploy to preserve his status and Lola and Iván respond in kind. Like a lot of creative types who work together on a project, they protest to care for each other, as artists and human beings. But in the end, their own personal needs outweigh those of the collective.

As it is with most endeavors…