This semester is a bittersweet one for me. I found out during winter break that I would be unable to go on my study abroad trip to Rome this Spring semester due to circumstances I don’t feel like going into. But what I’ve found is that I’ve never enjoyed the Champaign-Urbana area as much as I am now. So watching Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristinia Barcelona makes me a tad upset that I will not find an Italian love of mine anytime this year. But I am young, and Rome is old, and in the future we will finally meet.
At this year’s Oscars, Penelope Cruz picked up the award for best actress in a supporting role for her portrayal of Maria Elena, a mentally distressed ex-wife to the suave main character Juan Antonio Gonzalo, played by No County For Old Men’s Javier Bardem. Juan Antonio is a man who loves women and knows how to win their affection. He has a power I wish I’ve had all of my life. I have been a fan of Woody Allen films for several years now and I think I finally have picked out my reasoning for finding such enjoyment in his work. I feel that his movie dialog best represents everyday conversations and common personalities to such a degree that we feel as though we are listening in on true conversations and experiencing real situations. This film is about two friends, Vicky and Cristina played by Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson, who travel to Barcelona, Spain for the summer. The two stay at Vicky’s distant relative’s, one she had never met, luxurious estate while Vicky works towards her masters in Catalan Identity. Our narrator, who guides us through the story, let’s us know from the start what types of personalities these two have, and how it affects their lives. They are both looking for love, but one is able to settle for one kind while the other is constantly searching for the perfect fairytale romance.
While at an art gallery, Vicky and Cristina happen to see Juan Antonio for the first time, a painter who has gained attention for a violent fight he and his ex-wife had had prior to their divorce. Shortly after, Juan Antonio invites the women to the town Oviedo where he says he will show them around and in the end make love to both. Cristina, the more open and risky of the two, is eager to take him up on his offer while Vicky, the more conservative and recently engaged, is outwardly opposed to such an idea. But, the two end up going with him, and a love triangle soon is interrupted by a fourth party: Maria Elena.
I loved this film. I feel like the events are very unexpected and extremely funny. Just like any other Woody Allen movie, the conversations are smart, sharp, and extremely clever. Though the events that play out in the film may not be the most realistic, it feels like these characters could exist and a situation like this can arise. There is a fantasy element to it as these two friends are escaping reality and home and placing themselves in a foreign country to have new experiences. I could believe these characters. Vicky is the one who settles for something if it seems like the most secure thing to do. Getting engaged to a man she is not entirely sure she’s in love with is something that she feels is a good thing to do because he is well off and it will be better for her in the long run. Love to her entails being practical and safe. Cristina, on the other hand, is looking for true love that is such a hard thing to find. She doesn’t know what it is that she’s looking for, but she knows that she hasn’t experienced it yet. This journey for both the women marks a point in their life where they are faced with the burden of identifying love and how they will fit it into their lives.
Penelope Cruz is fantastic as the melancholy painter who is in love with with Juan Antonio but feels that something is missing in their relationship to make it work. Cruz displays an emotion that is rarely seen on the screen. We see a woman who is torn apart by her inability to stay in a relationship with a man she is so deeply in love with. They are meant for each other but aren’t able to make it work. This is mentally distressing on her, leaving her suicidal and depressed. Cruz plays perfectly as a complex and confused woman who wants so much to figure things out, and on occasion loses her mind when she’s unable to. Though we only see her in half the movie, Cruz steals every scene she’s in and makes you believe the mental turmoil she is experiencing.
This film is out to rent now and is a great starting point for becoming an avid fan of Woody Allen’s work.
Landon Cassman: Through boredom and pure enjoyment I find myself always involved in either film or music related endeavors. This is one of them.
Comments
Tiffany (Tiffany) says:
(Posted April 1st, 2009 at 8:28 pm)
This was actually on the channel 2 line up a couple weeks ago, which made me REALLY excited because I had heard a lot of hype but never got out to see it.
I fell in love with it, but it took me a bit to pin the reasoning down. Of course, Penelope Cruz was just exuding some serious sexuality and you can’t go wrong with a romance in Barcelona, but it was something a little more to that.
The movie opens with these two girls that are seemingly completely unaware of each other: they’re sitting in the same car, but they’re staring out the windows, apparently lost in thought.
Then, they’re thrown into this whirl wind of passion and love and doubt and mistakes and this (admittedly) unbelievable plot.
And then it ends with them, again, silent, navigating their way through an airport (if I remember correctly). They return, slipping right back into their original life. There was no happily ever after, no last minute dramatic scenes of two lovers running towards each other in the airport. And I think that’s what got me - in life, no matter the event, it’s what you do with the experience. These women went through this exaggerated romance and came out the other side with little to show for it. Even in the fairy-tale setting, they didn’t get their fairy-tale ending. And if that’s true with such an ornate situation, it can be true on a lower more real life scale. People get so hung up on their ‘perfect’ idea of life that they don’t realize the beauty in what they’ve got.
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Landon Cassman
Through boredom and pure enjoyment I find myself always involved in either film or music related endeavors. This is one of them.
Jeff Brandt (Jeff Brandt) says:
(Posted March 2nd, 2009 at 11:15 pm)
I’ve seen references to this movie like five times in the last two days, so I guess I need to rent it.