Amazing movie...I feel I visited Barcelona already!!
Added 11/22/2009
I am very happy I bought the movie. I liked Penelope's character. I really enjoyed the music, the beautiful spaces in Barcelona where the movie takes place.
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(+) The genuine article
Added 11/16/2009
I bought VCB on DVD a couple of months ago, but delayed watching it as I wasn't sure what to make of the mixed reviews and also because I wasn't sure if my wife (who generally doesn't like Woody Allen films) would enjoy it. I needn't have worried because VCB is easily Woody Allen's best film comedy since Husbands and Wives. Everyone in our household enjoyed it immensely.
When I say 'comedy' I don't mean mildly amusing, I mean laugh-out-loud funny. Admittedly it does take a while to get into its stride, but the scenes between Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz in the second half of the film are absolutely hilarious in exactly the same way that the unfaithful husband and his embarrassing astrology-obsessed girlfriend were funny in Husbands and Wives. I think overall this is what impressed me most about the film: it marks the return of Woody Allen as the razor sharp observer of human frailty, something we have seen too little of in recent years. Watching the film also made me realise why Allen struggles to find a mass audience these days. Far more than other directors, he uses body language - or to be more precise the discrepancy between what a character is thinking (privately) and what he or she says - rather than the screenplay to create dramatic tension and drive the narrative forward. We have grown so used to directors who spoon feed us with special effects or obvious plot devices that we are fast losing the ability to appreciate those who use more subtle techniques.
The central theme of the film is the nature of erotic desire, its connection to art and, more specifically, the conflict between erotic desire as the longing for something wild and seemingly unattainable and erotic desire as the bond which nurtures loyalty and long term relationships. This is essentially the same theme that Allen explored so adroitly in Hannah and Her Sisters and Husbands and Wives. Vicky does genuinely love her fiance, but he can't satisfy her longing for aesthetic fulfilment; in the end, she has to make a choice and she chooses to remain unfulfilled. Cristina is more bohemian and experimental, but eventually realises she is in way over her head in a complex menage-a-trois that isn't working. Some critics complained that, at the end of the film, Vicky seems to have learned nothing from her experience, and that this is a weakness. I think this misses the point. Vicky has learnt that she is much more like Cristina than she initially imagined. Cristina has benefited from her experience but is (one suspects) sufficiently American in her values not to want to repeat it. Both girls are left with a longing for something that remains out of reach. The film appears to lack a clear resolution because that it what real life is like. If Woody Allen had been making a conventional romantic comedy, it would presumably have ended with a wedding scene in which the bride abandons her 'worthy but dull' husband-to-be for the man she really loves. We can all feel grateful that he chose instead to make a film about the restlessness of the human condition.
The key message for Woody Allen fans who haven't yet seen VCB is that the critics who praised this film on its release were right: it does represent a genuine return to form. It is not as strong or assured as his best films from the '70s and '80s, but it is recognisably by the same director and exhibits most of the qualities that made those films so special. For most of us, that will be more than enough.
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Woody Allen's sex fantasies
Added 11/14/2009
Seems like the centerpiece of this movie is a certain sex fantasy (I won't offer a spoiler) involving Scarlett Johansson. Stilted dialog, wooden acting- I found the whole thing implausible, and the characters completely unsympathetic. I give the movie two stars only for the stunning scenes of Barcelona.
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An experience to remember
Added 11/13/2009
I don't enjoy many Woody Allen movies, mainly because I find the man himself to be highly annoying as an actor. I didn't expect to like this movie much, but it engaged me and by the time it was over I realized that I had really enjoyed it. It stuck in my head for awhile as a bit of an experience. I didn't even mind the strange narration. It's hard to pin down exactly what I liked about it, but the acting was good, Penelope Cruz was fun to watch, the dialogue was interesting, and I just enjoyed absorbing the whole thing. Partly it was the (to me) somewhat exotic setting I suppose. I'd guess that this type of movie is not for everyone, but I found it very enjoyable.
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Penelope Cruz is Stunning
Added 11/11/2009
Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is a Woody Allen movie that offers three of the most luminous presences in film today: Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, and Scarlett Johannson. Because this is a Woody Allen film the characters are cheesy, and the plot very flimsy. The plot centers around two American best friends who are polar opposites of each other: Cautious and prudent Vicky (Rebecca Hall) who is about to marry a successful and stable man who loves her very much, and wild and voluptuous Cristina (Scarlett Johannson) who is on a journey to discover and enjoy life. In Spain for the summer they run into a Spanish artist who just came out of a literally bloody divorce, and who promised the two fun, sex, and self-discovery. After a weekend with the artist Vicky has made love with him, and now questions the very foundation of her life, and Cristina decides the artist is very fun and sexy and so moves in with him. Then the artist's ex-wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz) shows up, and after some initial tension the three fall in love with each other. Maria Elena tells Vicky that before the couple was always fighting, and even though they were madly in love with each other they just couldn't be with each other -- something was missing, and that person was Vicky. Vicky completed them, and as the summer comes to an end Vicky sits by the sparkling Spanish coast, and thinks to herself, "Well, that's all very good -- but what's in it for me?" So she leaves, and after some more misadventures everybody and everything ends up the way they and things were in the beginning.
This is an enjoyable movie, and it's enjoyable because Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, and Scarlett Johannson are truly great screen presences. Javier Bardem has had a long and storied career, and one of our greatest living actors. He was scary and eery in "No Country for Old Men," and now he's charming and nice.
Penelope Cruz made some interesting movies in her native Spain before Hollywood stole and abused her. She was very good in "Ham! Ham!" (where she starred alongside Javier Bardem) and very bad in everything that she's made for Hollywood. In "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" she is very much the star. She's startling beautiful, and when she's posing for Vicky's camera she's incredibly sultry and sexy. And when she's crazy she's even sexier.
If there's a role that Hollywood leading ladies can play extremely well it's that of the psychopath. Angelina Jolie was absolutely mesmerizing in "Girl, Interrupted" -- and acting the part of a teenage psychopath you had to think she wasn't acting at all. Ditto for Salma Hayek. She's a terrible actress, and the one good solid credible performance she delivers is in "Lonely Hearts" where she plays a deranged psychopath who kills as passionately as she loves. In Woody Allen's movie Penelope Cruz playing the part of the neurotic and moody, violent and deranged artist comes across so eloquently and naturally we have think she must be like this in real life as well. Whatever the reason Penelope Cruz is just so fun and pleasant to be with in this movie.
And then there's Scarlett Johannson. Of late she has become Woody Allen's muse and leading lady, having starred in his previous two films ("Scoop" and "Match Point"). Seeing her alongside Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz we see her limitations as an actress -- she just doesn't have the presence and charisma of these two brilliant Spanish actors. But she does have Woody Allen who gives her more screen time than anyone else -- even though in this film she is by far the least talented of all the actors.
Once upon a time Woody Allen made fresh and energetic and clever movies. Then he turned his film-making into psychotherapy for himself, and from then on we had to endure Woody Allen's neurotic navel-gazing and mental masturbation. And now Woody Allen's filmmaking is motivated by something else entirely.
For the first thirty minutes of "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" I really couldn't figure what it was. Woody Allen was never a good writer -- his jokes were too forced and too artificial. In this movie all the dialogue is wooden and stiff, and decidedly unfunny -- and we only tolerate the bad dialogue because of Woody Allen's overuse of narration which does keep the film moving at a fairly fast clip and because the bad dialogue is delivered by some of the most accomplished actors we have today. And even though the actors are very good about one-third in I started to get itchy because the movie, quite frankly, just didn't have a story.
Allen's also a very limited film-maker. Many of the transitions in the movie were clumsy and amateurish. Most of the time the cinematography comes across as succinct and economical but there are some moments when the movie looks clumsy and haphazard.
So if Woody Allen's got nothing to say and he's not particularly adept at the technique of film-making why is he still making movies? I was struggling with this question before I finally awoke to the answer staring right in front of me: Scarlett Johannson.
Woody Allen has fallen in love with Scarlett Johannson -- just like the way the artist couple played by Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz fell in love with her. Scarlett's sexy, she's young, she's unmolded and extremely impressionable, she's self-absorbed, and at the end of the day she's going to use you and then dump you and then completely forget about you. When Vicky (Scarlett Johannson) tells the artist couple that she needs to leave and discover more of herself Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz) becomes angry and says she knew that Vicky would just use them and then when it was no longer fun for her she would just leave. Woody Allen is by far the most narcisstic filmmaker we have today so we have to believe that Woody's subconsciously saying to Scarlett: "I love you, I worship you, I've made you into a star and given you more screen time than what aesthetics and audiences would permit but you don't really care about me right? And you could leave me at anytime, right?" And how does Scarlett respond to Woody Allen's surrogates in the film? "It's not about you, it's about me."
So arguably "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is about Woody Allen's romantic frustrations with his leading lady. Woody Allen's psychotherapy sessions masquerading as films worked commercially because they articulated the phobias and anxieties of his loyal audience. And we're willing to tolerate Woody Allen's new obsession with Scarlett Johannson because let's face it -- we're also obsessed with her. There are many actresses more talented and more beautiful than her -- but she's easily one of the sexiest. And on the big screen she's like a magnet, drawing us in, unable to take our eyes off her. You go, Woody.
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Sterile and pointless
Added 11/6/2009
Ben Kingsley, as aging English Professor David Kepesh, acts his way somnabulantly through this unremarkable adaptation of Philip Roth's novella.
It's easy to detect when a movie is aimed deliberately at the "National Public Radio" crowd. Scenes in this movie repeatedly visit squash courts and an eatery advertising "Gelato and Pastries". Musical selections crop up with deadly predictability--most prominently, some selections from French composer Erik Satie. Okay, we get it, this character is an intellectual and he's well-versed in the schtick that comes with it, down to the raging self-doubts. If it sounds tiresome---yes, it definitely is.
It's up to Kingsley to carry the movie, and his performance is flat. There are so many shots of the back of his bald pate that maybe Patrick Stewart could have been used as a stand-in--or Donald Pleasance, were he still alive. Penelope Cruz seems miscast for the most part, though her character becomes more striking after she disappears for a while and returns with a short, Nastassia Kinski-esque hairdo.
But, the surest sign that this movie fails is the fact that the scenes intended to be the most poignant also are faintly ridiculous, as when Dennis Hopper's character dies, and when Cruz poses for a "pre-mastectomy portrait". I blame this on the director, who failed to elicit more than rote performances from a fine group of actors, and failed to enliven a predictable script.
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A Passionate and Torrid Love Affair
Added 10/4/2009
Elegy is a slow-paced, beautifully photographed movie based on 'The Dying Animal' by Philip Roth. It is about one of Roth's prominent characters who appears in many of his novels, David Kepesh. In this movie, Kepesh, played by Ben Kingsley, has left his wife many years ago and has been involved in a regular affair-without-questions with Patricia Clarkson. He is a professor at a New York university where he sees and is smitten by a beautiful young woman, Penelope Cruz. They begin a torrid and passionate love affair but Kepesh is always afraid of the ultimate commitment. He has a son who calls him at odd hours of the day and night, deriding Kepesh for his life problems which he blames on Kepesh's abandoning his family years earlier. Kepesh is fearful that his May-December romance with Penelope Cruz will not work out so he is self-defeating in his interactions with her.
Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz do an excellent job and the pieces of the plot fall together very nicely as the movie progresses. The character development of both Cruz and Kingsley is very well done.
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Memorable performances by lead actors
Added 9/21/2009
Elegy: mournful, melancholy or plaintiff poem, especially a funeral song or lament for the dead. This superb production is as close to perfection as a film can get. The editing, cinematography, and scriptwriting all exhibit supreme levels of excellence, but it is the acting of Penelope Cruz, Sir Ben Kingsley and Dennis Hopper under the guidance of Spanish director, Isabel Coixet, that ensure the enduring importance of this film. It begins with Sir Ben's character, David Kepesh, a celebrity social historian, being interviewed by the acclaimed Charlie Rose about the trumping of sexual freedom in the early days of the American colony. That tells us right off the bat where his interests lie. He is a man deeply committed to the aesthetic, who has made a habit of seducing beautiful young coeds when the opportunity presents itself, and falling back on his rainy day woman, played by Patricia Clarkson. It is, he confesses later, a form of arrested development, where he and the character played by Denis Hopper lived the whole of their lives as teenagers, incapable of receiving real love when it presented itself. Then enter Penelope Cruz in the guise of Cuban student, Consuela Castillo, a beautiful, exotic, and intelligent woman 30 years his junior, who falls for him. It's the real thing for him, too, but his inability to commit, exacerbated by his fear of aging and an expectation that she will eventually drop him for a handsome, potent young man of her vintage just about wrecks it for him. The dénouement is very moving. I won't spoil it, but make sure you have a box of tissues at the ready. The pace and intelligence of this film reminded me of Canadian director Denys Arcand's work ("Invasion of the Barbarians"). This must surely be Penelope Cruz's greatest film performance, and Sir Ben? Well, what can one say that hasn't been said about this extraordinary actor? The intimate moments between he and Penelope Cruz are truly memorable. No it is not cliched: it explores enduring themes about human interactions from a fresh perspective.
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