Avaliações do Metacritic

Detail is what makes Official Competition a joy to behold.

If awards season gets up your nose, with its self-congratulatory speeches and luvvie back-patting, this playful and wildly entertaining Spanish satire on the filmmaking process is the perfect antidote.

Despite its commitment to biting humor and acerbic analysis, Competencia Oficial is, at its heart, a celebration of artists and their process.

Cruz is the film's MVP as Lola, kookier than she's ever been, and playing well into the character's question mark of a persona — is she a true auteur or a hack? You never really find out, but watching Lola become increasingly disillusioned with the whole project makes her the closest we get to a relatable character in this whole heightened satire.

Seeing Cruz and Banderas show off their comedic chops is definitely a pleasure, and the farcical final scenes will leave viewers on a high. But this film won’t win many competitions, official or otherwise.

Official Competition is another film about filmmaking, but it escapes hermeticism by homing in on actors and acting.

Essentially a frothy bagatelle, and sometimes overworking the slightest of jokes, nevertheless this lively, sleekly executed farce from the Argentinian makers of black comedy The Distinguished Citizen offers comic and visual pleasures alike, plus crisp acting from its lead trio.

Cruz is quite obviously having a ball sending up the ivory-tower vanities and mannerisms of the prodigious auteurs she’s worked with over the years. It’s a performance of fizzy, frenzied, physically elastic inventiveness, though she doesn’t render Lola a complete cartoon.

Co-directors Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn would rather offer viewers a no-concept, light and breezy big-screen hangout, betting that audiences will turn out to watch a pair of beloved celebs cut loose, and that the actors’ megawatt charisma will be enough to carry the show. At least for a certain amount of time, the bet pays off.

As a fan of Cohn and Duprat’s tighter, darker previous collaborations I was keenly aware of the passage of screen time and slack pacing here. “Official Competition” feels like an 80 minute spoof bundled in the gauze of a 115 minute film.