Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Another of the movies that I recorded off of one of the Showtime channels is Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona. It's going to be on again, tomorrow (Nov. 5) at 8:15 AM on Flix, and again on Nov. 15, so as always, I made a point of watching it so I could do a review here and free up some space on my DVR.

With a little help from a narrator who gives us voiceover throughout the movie, we learn right away what the title means. Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) are two people and good friends from college. Barcelona, of course is the city in Catalonia known for its architecture and being somewhat different from the rest of Spain. Vicky is working on her master's degree which has to do with Catalan identity, which is part of the reason she's going to Barcelona for the summer before returning home to New York to get married to Doug (Chris Messina); she's also got an aunt Judy (Patricia Clarkson) who lives there with her husband. Cristina doesn't seem to know what she wants to do with her life after having made a short film.

Barcelona being known for that architecture and being a tourist haven, it's unsurprising that the two young women want to go see the city, its sights, and its bustling cultural scene. One day they're at a gallery, wher some of Juan Antonio's (Javier Bardem) works are being exhibited. Later that evening, they all wind up at the same restaurant, albeit with different parties; the two women by themselves and Juan Antonio with a bunch of artist friends. Cristina keeps looking over toward Juan Antonio, who finally comes to their table with an interesting proposition. He's planning to fly to Oviedo in the northwest of Spain for the weekend, and is inviting Vicky and Cristina. The only thing is, he's leaving in an hour or so, so they need to decide right now.

Obviously, we wouldn't have a movie if the two women didn't accept, or at least we'd have a very different movie. They do accept, and as Juan Antonio is showing them the sights of Oviedo which are just as lovely as Barcelona, Cristina finds herself falling in love with Juan Antonio. The only problem is that she has an ulcer which gets aggravated by all the wine she's been drinking, leaving her laid up in bed for a whole day. Vicky, who wasn't so excited about flying off impulsively, since she's got a fiancé back in New York after all, has to go around town just her and Juan Antonio. And wouldn't you know it, she finds herself falling for Juan Antonio too, since he's just so charming.

So there's already the basis for an interesting love triangle, but it's about to get a whole lot more interesting. Vicky, as I already mentioned, has a fiancé, and it turns out that he's got some impulsiveness himself. Since Vicky is going to be spending the entire summer in Barcelona, why doesn't Doug fly over there, work in the company's Barcelona office, and take a weekend off to get married to Vicky in romantic Barcelona before having the big splashy show of a wedding back in the States in the fall? Obviously, it's going to be tough for Vicky to say no.

And then there's Juan Antonio. He's divorced, having had a tempestuous relationship to Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz). However, she suddenly calls up Juan Antonio in the middle of the night because her current relationship with an architect has gone south. She finds that Juan Antonio has an American girlfriend, and there's that tempestuousness.

Whether or not you like Vicky Cristina Barcelona is going to depend in part on what you think of Woody Allen, but more importantly what you think about these particular characters. Thankfully, Allen only directed, so we don't get the annoying neuroticism and unrealisticness of some of the characters Allen played in movies from Annie Hall onward. On the other hand, all of the characters we see are making some pretty big screw-ups with their lives that lead to a lot of complications and potential heartache after the ation in the movie ends. It's easy for somebody detached from the proceedings to see what might happen, but the viewer has the inability to shake some sense into these characters.

As for me, I actually liked the movie despite the sometimes frustrating characters and despite the fact that I'm not the biggest fan of Allen's work. Not that I'd actually want to live with any of these characters, of course. But a 90-minute movie about them works just fine.