Glenn Whipp: Fierce, ferocious and focused — Penélope Cruz is the beating heart of ‘Ferrari’

Penélope Cruz enters the Michael Mann biopic “Ferrari” with a scene that manages to be funny, shocking, revealing and — hear me out — operatic.

Also: She didn’t want to do it.

At least, she tells me she didn’t want to do it the way it was written. Playing Laura Ferrari, the wife and business partner of motor racing mogul Enzo Ferrari, Cruz was called on to unleash her character’s pent-up rage by firing a gun at a wall behind Enzo when he arrives home after spending the night, presumably, in the arms of another woman. (It turns out, Laura doesn’t even know the half of it.)

The scene terrified Cruz, and she asked director Mann if she could do it without firing the gun because she didn’t think she could pull off the combination of heightened melodrama and comedy. Mann’s response: “That’s not going to happen. We’re only going to do this version because it will work.”

And it does. When “Ferrari” premiered at the Venice Film Festival in late August, the audience laughed — partly from shock,