TIFF 2021: Official Competition
TIFF 2021Official Competition is not a comedy that sets out for the belly laugh. There’s a fine line between idiosyncrasy and silly, and Official Competition tight-rope walks it. It sets out mindfully to patch together a flow of moments, big and small, drizzled with hyperbole and irony that make an audience member stop to think, “hey, that’s funny.”
Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, and Oscar Martinez star as the director and two leads, respectively, of a big-budget vanity film project. Each character is immersed in the absurdity of a stereotype, but fleshes that boilerplate out. Thus, Official Competition never quite feels ludicrous because it lands the audience into a behind-the-scenes world where the typecasts hold up despite the surroundings of the heightened reality of the filmmaking industry. Official Competition usually feels like some form of exaggerated authenticity, but a somewhat reasonable depiction of actors and actresses nonetheless. Cruz plays the pretentious director with strange rehearsal tactics; Martinez is the revered stage actor, scholar, and advocate of the acting craft; and Banderas is the international star whose ego is in the stratosphere. It’s a straightforward comedic collision, but everything serves the purpose of fleshing out the project with a credible exaggeration of tone.
The actors’ chemistry is terrific. Directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat allow the scenes to elongate as needed to empower the cast. They allow the cast long periods of time for their entrances or emotional responses. It’s an almost theatrical quality that allows scenes an organic, minimally edited touch. As the actors explore and find their reactions to one another for the film they are rehearsing, the audience too is allowed to take time to read the characters’ minds. It’s an atypical approach to comedy, because Official Competition is seldom targeting a singular punchline. In fact, the prevailing tone – one of quirkiness and spaciousness that’s accentuated by big, empty, echoing rehearsal area – is one that assassinates a lot of jokes while allowing the film to play the long game of building character attachment. The eccentric tone ends up pervading every frame of the film, and the slow build on these ostentatious filmmakers delivers its fantastic humourous, yet jaw-dropping, finale.
Official Competition inhabits the same space as something like Living in Oblivion or State and Main. It’s a light, breezy, well crafted film about filmmaking. Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat clearly have a highly collaborative style, one that focuses equally on developing a visual aesthetic and working extensively with actors. In its own way, Official Competition is a fantastic-looking movie, particularly within its production design, which enhances the over-the-top isolated world of artistic pretention. But above all, this is a playground where three amazing performers are given reign to establish a fresh chemistry and conflict via long, well acted takes. As an actor, this must have been a joy of a project for Cruz, Martinez, and Banderas. It drags at points, perhaps a function of all that space and time that the film employs to allow its stars to breathe, but the final act and witty character portraits provide highly rewarding payoffs.