Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz and Óscar Martínez star in ‘Official Competition’, an acid and funny comedy about the profession of cinema
“I am going to the Oscars with great enthusiasm. I don’t expect to win it. It already seems surreal to me to be both nominated at the same time,” says Penélope Cruz (Alcobendas, 47 years old), with amazing serenity, a candidate for the best actress award for her role in ‘Parallel Mothers’, like her husband Javier Bardem, in the male category, for ‘Being the Ricardos’. «How strong that!», Óscar Martínez (Buenos Aires, 72 years old) replies next to her. “It’s just that I find it incredible,” the actress continues. Javier and I repeat to ourselves that this is happening. How rare and how special it is. And I don’t expect anything else. If then it happens, then you get the big surprise. I don’t give him less importance than he has, because he has it, but I don’t give it more either », she comments.
Both actors, along with Antonio Banderas (Málaga, 61 years old), yesterday presented ‘Official Competition’, the new film by Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn, which hits theaters this Friday, a feature film that could almost be said to tell two stories that they are the same. One, the main one, is the one that portrays, with an acid and stark humor, the back room of a profession, that of cinema, as beautiful and dazzling as it is full of egos, hobbies and oddities. Seeking notoriety, a businessman sets out to shoot a film that will leave a mark. To do this, he buys the rights to a novel and hires the cult director Lola Cuevas (Cruz) and two well-known performers: Félix Rodríguez, a star who has triumphed in Hollywood who is brought to life by a colossal Banderas, and Iván Torres, a seasoned performer. in the theater and teacher of actors embodied in Martínez.
The other, the secondary, is the very plot of the novel that is revealed to the viewer while the actors and the director are in full pre-production preparing the characters. Professional jealousy, envy, excessive egos and conflicting work methods come to the fore throughout a film as simple as it is fun, in which the great weight rests on the shoulders of the actors.
But, is the competition really as fierce as it is portrayed on the tape? “There is everything,” the actress replies during the marathon day of junkets and interviews. «I have had wonderful companions, who have stayed in my life forever. And then I have seen more complicated people, who work alone, but you always have to ask yourself what is behind such behavior. Her character, in fact, takes the tests to the limit to some actors about to explode. «If I met someone like that, I would leave the film. She is a torturer, she is sick, she enjoys seeing people have a bad time, she thinks that from there something interesting can arise in creation, that no one can work from a place of harmony and that takes her to all areas of her life”, explains who has taken elements from several people with whom he has met throughout his career, both inside and outside the cinema, to compose such a hilarious character. “She could never share her names,” she says with a laugh.
As much as the hype surrounds the film, much of what is told is real. “When I first read the script, I laughed a lot and was absolutely ready to work from the beginning,” says Banderas. Things got interesting when the directors met with the actors to work for a couple of days. «We were contributing things, experiences lived in the first person or that we had heard. There are a lot of things that we have experienced that could not be told, but that are extraordinary, but we have cut ourselves off, ”says the Malaga native with amusement.
It is worth asking them if to have a lasting career, the ego has to leave the scene. “Not necessarily”, answers Martínez, “there are people who have been in the profession for 70 years and are riding on their very happy ego, without the slightest contradiction. In a profession like ours, if you don’t have an ego, you’re dead, but if you don’t transcend your ego, you’re a wimp, a puppet».
«This type of pathology -reflects Banderas- occurs more in the frustrated, who are the ones who use their egos the most. People who have succeeded have freed themselves from these anxieties and work in a much calmer way. People like Anthony Hopkins or Meryl Streep work with everything in mind, knowing that the important thing is the message. They work with you, not against you », he asserts.