★★★★ There are two ways to approach this satire on the world of artistic creation in general and cinema in particular. One is taking the anecdote of the competition between two actors: a “committed” teacher who hates pastimes (Martínez) and a Hollywood star (Banderas) summoned by a very manipulative avant-garde director to try the masterpiece (commissioned by a pharmacist eager for prestige). The other is to find out what is true in the positions of each one and discover that, beyond several moments where the laughter is permanent thanks to a perfect use of the cinematographic apparatus (sound, arrangement in space, the subtle movement of the camera even when the fixed shot prevails), everyone is right and that, ultimately, a film is, like a painting or a novel, something that is born from someone’s head, from a particular person who is nourished, but does not usurp, the art of others (or their craft). The nucleus is Penélope Cruz, who here manages to combine the whimsy of an artist with intelligence, a rare tenderness and, above all, grace, knowledge of the times of comedy. Even the most “declaimed” texts have a second degree, a distance in the staging, which allows us to wink.
