Pride and pretense

I had been putting off watching Vicky Cristina Barcelona because I’m not the biggest fan of Scarlett Johansson and I didn’t feel an overwhelming desire to watch her for an hour and a half. I’m not going to waste your time by going over the details of why I’m not a ScarJo fan, but I will tell you this: Penelope Cruz’s  Oscar is well-deserved. I haven’t seen Volver yet, but I am sure she is equally as intense in that movie as she is in this one. 

The movie revolves around two best friends, Vicky and Cristina, American women who go to Barcelona for the summer and fall for the same guy, an artist played by Javier Bardem. Vicky and Cristina are apparently polar opposites, and yet supposedly best friends. Quite unconvincing, considering how much disdain Vicky has for Cristina’s lifestyle, and how disapproving Cristina is of Vicky’s uptight demeanor. Anyway, Vicky is the more practical one; all common sense, no spontaneity. She is in Barcelona for educational purposes, as she is doing a thesis on Catalan identity. Cristina, on the other hand, is more of a caricature of the hipster folk we see these days. I say that she is a caricature because she isn’t a person, but more of an idea. The idea is that this woman has no qualms about anything, no hesitations about making spontaneous decisions, and is in love with the idea of being impulsive and unequivocal with her life, so she does everything in her power to enforce this idea. I had absolutely no patience for her character, and the movie actually does address that her character is pretentious, which I was a little surprised by (in a good way).

Javier Bardem plays Juan Antonio, an artist who seduces the two friends and makes a proposition to sleep with them both. The offer, although probably intended by Woody Allen (who wrote and directed the film) to come off as sexy and endearing, felt contrived at best. I feel like Bardem’s character was too much of a cliche. It was as if Allen thought of all the things “real artists” say during normal conversations and came up with the most insanely off-base portrayal of one.

Penelope Cruz was the breath of fresh air that the movie badly needed. The film started off in a very pretentious manner, with a voice-over that grew really annoying as the movie progressed, so it really needed one kind of haphazard element that made the movie look gritty and undeliberate. Cruz was absolutely fabulous as the aggressively beautiful Maria Elena, Juan Antonio’s crazed ex-wife who occasionally threatens to kill herself or the other people around her in a vicious act of passion. I totally understand why she won the Academy Award for this movie.  She was just brilliant, and she proves time and time again that she is more than just a pretty face.

Overall, the movie was a little painful to sit through. Normally, I’m pretty good with Woody Allen movies. I loved Annie Hall, and enjoyed Sleeper. I didn’t particularly care for Match Point, but considering all the hot guys who were in that movie, I couldn’t resist. But Vicky Cristina Barcelona was just the movie I didn’t need to see after The Go-Getter completely didn’t agree with me. Some people might like the movie because they think that when people go to Spain they want to live the life of the passionate artist or whatever, but that is just Allen capitalizing on people’s romantic ideals of European travel. It’s a very true romantic ideal – to want to be swept away by some tall, dark, handsome brooding painter who spouts philosophy on a regular basis while on vacation in one of the most sensual countries in Europe – but when you package it in the way Allen has done in Vicky Cristina Barcelona,  the ideal is no longer romantic and it becomes a reflection of the increasingly mainstream hipster crowd we are getting these days. The Diablo Codys and Chuck Klostermans of the world can gush about the genius of Vicky Cristina Barcelona all they like, but I sure don’t see what the fuss is about.