THE director Christopher Guest may have finally rejected the mockumentary formula in favour of a more conventional ensemble comedy, but there’s plenty of common ground between For Your Consideration and his previous films. As in A Mighty Wind and This is Spinal Tap, what fuel the improvisational engine of Guest’s regular repertory group are the precarious dreams and explosive egos of a group of performers.

It is especially familiar territory for Guest and his team this time round, since the target is the film industry, specifically the hysteria that intoxicates Hollywood whenever there’s a sniff of an “awards buzz” about a movie.

This familiarity breeds, if not contempt exactly, a certain cruelty and a bittersweet bleakness that sets it apart from the rather more affectionate and forgiving approach of Guest’s previous films.

This is most evident in the character of Marilyn Hack (Catherine O’Hara). In a few brief brushstrokes, she’s sketched out as a needy neurotic — despite a career spanning decades, the studio security man can’t quite place her face; even as a character with a terminal disease, Marilyn frets that the lighting on set is unflattering.

BACKGROUND

• For Your Consideration

• For Your Consideration - review from the London Film Festival

• The feast of St Hubbins

Nip 'n' tuck, no thank you

Catherine O'Hara's latest role parodies the Botox'd movie diva

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• 2007 London Film Festival coverage

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She’s playing the tragic matriarch of a Jewish family in an appalling period drama entitled Home for Purim. Her co-stars include Victor Allan Miller (Harry Shearer), a serious thespian who finds himself best known for his work as a foot-long hot dog sausage. His miserable grin whenever anyone mentions the word “weiner” speaks volumes about his recent career.

Playing Marilyn’s errant daughter is Callie Webb (Parker Posey), an alternative comedienne fresh from a one- woman, no-audience show entitled No Penis Intended.

Despite the obvious dreadfulness of the movie they are starring in, all three actors are tipped for a nomination. And all three abase and humiliate themselves to secure it. The pace of this sardonic screwball comedy accelerates as the hype gathers momentum; the gags are a quickfire assault of industry in-jokes. A smirking executive (Ricky Gervais, no great departure) suggests script changes (make it less Jewish is the key proposal).

Marilyn pays a visit to the plastic surgeon and ends up looking as if she is being smothered by her own lips. A Greek chorus of entertainment reporters (including the incomparable Fred Willard) stokes the rumour mill.

The devastation of rejection is strewn across the screen like the wreckage of a motorway pile-up. If the laughs are darker than normal, that’s because the jokes are a little close to home.

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