11/15/10 - Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008, 96 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0497465/

This was my first Woody Allen film and I have no idea why I've never seen anything by him. Anyway, this movie was one that I'd wanted to see for a while. The previews made the movie out to be somewhat "girly" but it still looked like there would be a ton of quality performances so I still had high hopes.

The film follows Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) as they go to Spain for the summer. They stay with one of Vicky's friends Judy (Patricia Clarkson) and her husband Mark (Kevin Dunn). When a local painter Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) takes a liking to the girls things get complicated since Vicky is engaged to Doug (Chris Messina). Things get even more complicated when Cristina falls for Juan Antonio and even more complicated once again when Juan Antonio's ex-wife and fellow painter Maria Elena (Penélope Cruz) comes back to his life. Christopher Evan Welch serves as the Narrator.

I can sum this movie up simply as the movie I was hoping Lost in Translation to be. What I mean by this is that I had heard great things about Lost in Translation and then when I saw it I was wholly disappointed. Nothing really impressed me and instead I felt like there were a lot of flaws which I commented on back when I saw it. Anyway, for some reason I feel like Vicky Cristina Barcelona lived up to my preconceptions of Lost in Translation. Obviously these are completely different movies (Lost in Translation boils down to being about loneliness while this comes down to being a movie about views on love and that) but that's why the word "preconceptions" is important. Vicky Cristina Barcelona surprised me in what it ended up being but in the good way.

I think what I liked most about the film is the pacing. This isn't something I normally single out for being great but I really feel the need to do so here. The movie doesn't rush at any point but it slowly meanders about the plot. It's a perfect pacing for the setting of Spain where the people are more laid-back than they are over here in the States. There's a frenetic pace a few times when things get chaotic especially due to Maria Elena but these highs and lows for the movie only serve to provide the necessary action that the movie needs to keep a viewer entertained. They are inserted perfectly and realistically into the plot so that I again have to comment how the pacing is superb. Really, not much happens in Vicky Cristina Barcelona but due to how everything is placed together I'm treated to a very enjoyable movie.

Another big contributing factor to my enjoyment of this movie is the character development. First and foremost everyone is believable. The way I thought about this movie was that we typically want to bottle up film characters into standard characters. By this I mean the standard action hero or the standard nerd character or the standard girl next door love interest character. Vicky Cristina Barcelona turns this belief upside-down. Cristina does completely fill the role of the somewhat ditzy blonde that believes love is all about passion and Vicky does fill the role of the more organized woman that believes love is more calculated. But through the movie both of these title characters shift and develop to not be so flat. This evolution of each character as each takes a little bit from the other is extremely important to the film as it somewhat folds back in on itself. The narrator keeps us aware of this at all times and really serves other excellent purposes throughout as he points out the details so that a casual viewer is sure to observe them.

On the acting front, everyone delivers superbly. The more passionate Spanish characters are perhaps more enjoyable to watch just because of their flair for the dramatic which they both frequently utilize. But everyone (even the minor characters) are well developed and well acted so that each scene is worth watching. By that I mean there's not a single character that ruins anything or is a pain to watch. One little thing I'd like to point out is that frequently scenes are shown with little sound as we are instead treated to some musical number. This mean that lots of scenes are the characters acting with no dialogue. Here, emotions sometimes need to be exaggerated so that viewers can more easily figure out what's going on given the handicap of audio clues. Again everyone comes through really well as each actor does a fine job. And one last note is that the music that serves to drown out these scenes is usually a pretty cool Spanish sounding number that matches up with the surrounding scenery of Barcelona. Everything really comes together in these scenes.

Overall, I gave this film a 7/10. Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a very enjoyable film. It's pretty encapsulated as it only covers a few months of two girls' trip to Barcelona for the summer. However, we are led to believe that each emerge completely changed so it's still really important. But when I look to give it a score, I'm torn. It's no doubt a very fun movie to watch and it has excellent pacing which is a big factor in a score as is the quality acting. But can I really put this film up there with top-notch movies like Lawrence of Arabia from a week ago? Not really but Vicky Cristina Barcelona is what I would probably call a "high" 7/10 if that makes sense.