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Every so often there is a film with wide distribution in cinemas that feels a little different.

I’m not saying that mainstream movies are samey, not really; there is a lot of variety in things like Top Gun: Maverick, Elvis, Nightmare Alley and The Batman – even the MCU mixes it up a little, but none of them are really stepping out of the norm.

There are films that show real audacity like this year’s Everything, Everywhere, All At Once and Nope, but even they didn’t have me coming out of the theatre thinking ‘that is not what I expected’. (I expected those movies to surprise me with wild invention and brilliantly imaginative character and plot choices and they did.)

It isn’t that Official Competition is full of twists and revelations then; it is just, as I say – different.

Of the films that do break the mould, a number are not in English; other countries do have a alternate sensibility and that is a part of what is going on here, this being a Spanish/Argentinian film. This isn’t quite it though, it is more about the movie’s characterisation, its intimacy and its scalpel sharp focus.

Official Competition revolves around the making of a movie itself. This conjures up ideas of on set friction between temperamental actors and put upon boom mic operators, frustrated writers, incapable directors, clueless producers and spiralling budgets but it is actually more of a parlour piece than that. The action rarely leaves a single house and there is little of the paraphernalia of film making involved. Instead we spend time with a celebrated director, hired specifically to make a masterpiece, and her two actors – one a darling of the stage and the other a proper movie star, as they rehearse. The treats are in how these three ‘artists’ interact, each nursing pretensions, expectations and significant egos.

With its restricted location you might think this is the kind of story that would have worked as a play but this is actually very cinematic, with some brilliant framing of the players and their surroundings. The film isn’t knowing or post modern but it certainly knows it is a film.

To say too much more would alter the expectations of anyone who has not seen this and potentially rob them of my experience but know that Official Competition is a wonderful film. The central cast of Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez are all superb and the writing and direction by Mariano Cohn, Gastón and Andrés Duprat are spot on.

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The Ripley Factor:

If you are looking for real world counterparts for each of the people in this film you might choose Tom Cruise for Banderas and Mark Rylance for Martinez. Maybe Pitt and Branagh, Robert Downey Jr. and Simon Russell Beale or back in the day Brando and Olivier. There are any number of comparisons here.

Cruz is harder to place though. Her character is supposed to be the most sought after and garlanded film director on the festival circuit, she simply has no equal in reputation and talent. There’s Almodóvar or Malick, Kubrick maybe. The main ones that come to mind in this setting are the Dardennes. You’ll notice something about that list though. In our reality there are no female directors who hold this status. Céline Sciamma is a contender, Jane Campion perhaps, Doucournau and Zhao are on the way but none of them are there yet. Not because they are not brilliant but because that is not the world we live in. How nice that this movie imagines a reality that is,

different.