“Official Competition”: Cruise Restrictions | J.D.M.

Penelope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martinez have an explosion in this harsh critique of the film industry.

It all started when 80-year-old billionaire Humberto Suárez (José Luis Gómez) wanted to make a great movie. The best in movies. So he buys the rights to adapt the Nobel Prize-winning novel Rivalry for a higher price. Later, he hires Lola Cuevas (Penelope Cruz), one of the best directors of the time, in his quest to achieve masterpiece.

Strange Lola immediately warns: Reading the novel will be very free. He also makes the scene the story of a rivalry between two brothers, Manuel who sends his brother Pedro to jail for causing the death of their parents in a car accident while he was intoxicated. While Pedro is serving his sentence, Manuel uses the opportunity to seduce Lucy, a prostitute who loves his brother.

Lola will hire best actor Evan Torres (Oscar Martinez) to play Manuel, while Petro will play the box office star Felix Rivero (Antonio Banderas). As the rehearsals progress, in fact, we can already imagine a rivalry between two actors who hate each other.

The trio’s relationship was explored by co – directors Mariano Cohn and Gaston Dubrat in a talented mix of humor, secondary and harsh, and he wrote the screenplay with Andres Dubrat. In Lola, Penelope Cruz turns into a fancy filmmaker with her curly red hair, he handles the two, repeating them over and over again with simple lines or plastic thread. During all of these exercises – Evan feels insulted, Felix becomes an enchantress – she raises the tension between the two men to its climax.

With brilliance, Oscar Martinez and Antonio Banderas leave all room for Penelope Cruz, who delivers one of his best shows here, fully playing the control and manipulation card. To our delight.

Rating: 4 out of 5