Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-

Official Competition feels very much a lesser Pedro Almodóvar film, one of his rare offerings with less substance. This movie satirizes celebrity culture, a recognizable point of view even from a non-American culture, but it’s also begging to be picked apart, analyzed, part of think pieces. Unfortunately for co-directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, it’ll never get that kind of attention. It’s almost an irony that I’m even writing about it right now. My movie review audience reaches will into the . . . ones.

This isn’t all Cohn and Duprat’s fault. Official Competition is getting some good reviews, by many people who clearly liked it more than I did. And, it’s almost certain that this movie would be a larger part of the pop culture conversation had it been released prior to 2020—maybe not much larger, but larger nonetheless. I went to see this at 7:30 on a Tuesday night and I was one of four people in the theater. So many people prefer watching their movies at home anymore, it had me contemplating the ultimate fate of the Seattle International Film Festival, which runs the theater where I saw this. How long can they sustain running the three theaters in town at this rate, I wonder?

I went to see it because I wanted to go to a movie, and this was the option. Options are limited broadly; what few options there are, I have either already seen or can already tell they aren’t worth my time. Was Official Competition worth my time? That’s tricky to answer. I enjoyed getting out to see a movie. I’d have preferred to see something better though, something not so convinced of its own cleverness.

Particularly in the beginning, scenes in this movie go on a very long time, usually with some combination of only three actors: Penélope Cruz, playing an eccentric and wildly demanding film director; and both Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez, playing the two stars of the film she is making. They have very different acting styles but ultimately the same amount of ego and hubris, and therein lies the central tension.

I thought a lot about the pandemic while watching this, as it felt a lot like a “covid movie,” with such a small cast. There’s a good 15 or so other actors, but never all in the same room, and probably ninety percent of the time, only three or four people in the same room at once. Production did get shut down due to covid, but the script was already written. I suppose they lucked out in already having a production that was easier to mount than most during lingering lockdowns.

It does make the story feel a little outside reality at times, though. We are witness to countless rehearsals and “acting exercises” (one of which gets Banderas’s and Martínez’s actor characters to unite in their fury toward their director), but never really any actual shooting on set. The script is very dialogue heavy, with both regular dialogue and the reading of their script-within-a-script. I have to admit that, in hindsight, it is very well constructed. It just that, from scene to scene, I consistently grew restless. I’ve seen references to this film’s “hilarity” and, with the exception of maybe two chuckles, it’s not funny at all. It doesn’t even particularly feel like it’s intended to be. Such is the case with satire, though, which makes the movie only particularly entertaining to those who are convinced they “get it.”

I’m pretty sure I get it, though. I’m just not exceedingly impressed. And unless you already have a deep investment in foreign films that explore such quasi-intellectual themes, you won’t be either.

*Sitting around trying to find ways to make the movie better.*

Overall: B-