FILM REVIEW: Vicky Cristina Barcelona
© A.J. Malouin 2008
(Rating: 7 by The Film Snob)
(See our side-bar page “How Caryl & Al Rate Movies”)
2008/Spain/USA. Written and directed by Woody Allen.)
With a big yawning wink at Henry James, two young women set off to spend the summer months on Holiday in the city of Barcelona. They go there because Judy and Mark Nash, American expatriates, have a huge home in which to put them up.
Even more important, they go there because the City of Barcelona offered to pay the film’s production costs if Woody Allen shot a film there. Sadly, the City of Barcelona did not get its money’s worth. More the to point, the audience here barely gets its money’s worth.
Our story? Vicky and Cristina are going to Barcelona to spend the summer with a distant relative of one of them. Vicky is steadfast and plodding, with her sweet future life planned out minutely with her sweet, plodding husband-to-be. Cristina, the blonde, is looking for something whose exact description eludes her totally. Cristina only knows what she *doesn’t* want.
We are not shown any of this, but are TOLT it by a voice-over narrator who is annoyingly present throughout the film, telling us continually what is going on — so that the actors do not have to *show* us, through acting, exactly what is going on.
One of the many annoying aspects of this misfire of an Allen is that the voice-over narrator is Not Even Woody Allen. We KNOW this is a Woody-Allen film: the opening credits and the Woody-Allen speechifying of almost allllll the characters almost allllll of the time make this semi-painfully clear. Yet W. Allen has chosen not to narrate the action (such as it is…) himself, and has inserted…someone…to do the Allen work of explaining what the actors cannot, or will not, *demonstrate*.
This misfire of a film could have been 42% better *merely* by having Allen read the voice-over narration which explains things that the characters’ acting apparently cannot.
Anyway…
Vicky and Cristina soon bump into the Spanish painter Juan Antonio, who invites them BOTH out of Barcelona for the weekend, making it clear that he wants to sleep with Both of them, and both at the same time.
Vicky and Cristina discuss this proposal amongst themselves at a length that makes us want to kill them both. Worse, they do it in speechifying terms which have the dead bones of alllll previous Woody Allen characters sticking out of their mouths as the two of them haggle the pros and cons of the proposed trip.
Guess what? They go!!! Cristina, the one who truly wants to Do It, is suddenly struck with food poisoning, and Vicky, the one who truly doesn’t want to Do It, is left to sitesee [sic] with Juan.
Guess what? They Do It! Once,
Later, Cristina is healthy and moves in with Juan. Juan’s ex-wife Maria Elena, an artist herself, tries to commit suicide and, as her reward, is allowed to live in Juan’s house.
Can you say “menage a trois?” Can you say “lesbian kisses?” Can you say “Psychological gunfire suddenly breaks out!!!”?
Meanwhile, the unhappily married Judy Nash tries to engineer Vicky back into Juan — or, more accurately, engineer Juan back into Vicky. Can you say “Live-ammunition gunfire suddenly breaks out!!!”?
The Film Snob thought Rebecca Hall did the best acting, as the jittery, morally conflicted Vicky. He thought the prettiest person in the film was Javier Bardem as Juan Antonio.
Caryl thought Bardem merely lookt scruffy.
Also very good in this film was Penelope Cruz as the suicidal, gun-totting, passionate and mercurial Maria Elena.
One huge (among several) disappointments for The Film Snob was the lack of romancing of Barcelona by the camera. In early Woody Allen films, the city of Manhattan itself has always been a major character in the story. Here, however, the characters simply walk through the motions of what little Barcelona there is.
The incredible La Merce Festival, the festival that celebrates the end of summer, is covered off by our two bimbos walking past eight or ten celebrants. Parc Guell is given the back of the camera’s hand also, with the water-drooling ceramic dragon just barely visible in the background of a conversation. The rest of the magnificent Parc is not shown at all, excepting in one black-and-white photograph which Cristina makes of several children. La Pedrena (The Stone Quarry), also, is only seen between the noses of two conversationalists.
Tragic work indeed. As far as these cameras are concerned, Gaudi might as well never have existed.
In the end? All of the characters end up exactly where they were at the beginning of the film. The voice-over narrator tells us that this is true, so that the characters, mercifully, do not actually have to act this out. All they have to do is walk through the Barcelona airport for their flight back to New York City. If Woody Allen were joining them, perhaps, just perhaps, his overseas filmmaking career would not continue to contain so many misfires like “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”
Perhaps.
(1 hr 36. Rated “PG-13” in the USA for mature thematic material involving sexuality, and for smoking. In English, and some Spanish and Catalan, with English subtitles in the USA, as needed. With Rebecca Hall as Vicky, Scarlett Johansson as Cristina, Christopher Evan Welch as the Voice-Over Narrator, Chris Messina as Doug, Patricia Clarkson as Judy Nash, Kevin Dunn as Mark Nash, Julio Perillán as Charles, Javier Bardem as Juan Antonio, Penélope Cruz as Maria Elena, and Pablo Schreiber as Ben.)