Cruz’s eccentric director employs unorthodox techniques to manage lead actors – and polar opposites – Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez
It’s clever casting – and very entertaining – to put screen goddess Penélope Cruz in the role of a superstar film director. Cruz is most famous for her working relationship with Pedro Almodóvar; often she’s described as his muse – demeaningly, I think. Well, with this playful satire of the movie industry, Argentinian film-making duo Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat give her all the power in the role of a borderline tyrannical auteur with a bonkers streak (think Marina Abramović or maybe even Björk). Wearing a massive curly wig – made from saucepan scourers, it looks like – Cruz lets rip with a deliciously fun performance.
She plays eccentric director Lola Cuevas, who is starting rehearsals for her new film: an adaptation of a prize-winning novel about the rivalry between two brothers. Lola’s casting tactic is to hire two actors from different worlds in the leads. Playing the no-good drunken brother is Félix Rivero (Antonio Banderas), a global movie star with a mega-watt smile, but a bit dim in the brains department. Opposite him, respected stage actor Iván Torres (Oscar Martínez) takes the role of the strait-laced brother.
