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For Humberto Suárez (José Luis Gómez), making it in the movie business is as simple as announcing a desire to make one. At the beginning of Official Competition, Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn’s mischievously funny new backstage comedy, the obscenely rich pharmaceutical magnate is celebrating his 80th birthday. But it’s hardly a happy occasion: the day is smothered with so much existential despair that when the cameras cut to him staring at his avalanche of gifts, it might as well be mounds of memento mori. All Suárez can think about is his wasting-away mortality. What will people remember him for? No one’s going to care even a couple of hours after his last breath about all the contracts signed, deals made, fortunes amassed.

Suárez eventually concludes that the best way to guarantee he be vaunted for generations to come is making — actually, providing all the funds for — a big-deal feature-length film. (Building bridges and starting charity foundations has a five-minutes-ago quality to him by now.) Envisioning an awards-devouring “great” movie, Suárez headhunts the Palme d’Or-winning filmmaker Lola Cuevas (Penélope Cruz) to adapt Rivalry, a novel about a decades-long feud between two brothers. Suárez hasn’t seen any of the press-shy Cuevas’ abstract-sounding movies. He hasn’t read a page of the Nobel-winning Rivalry, either. More enamored of potential reverence than a real connection to the art he’s helping make, Suárez figures the chances of his dream coming true are higher when fusing together two things associated with greatness. Whether he enjoys that greatness for himself is irrelevant.

Read the full column on 425.