Rating: Still mulling it overViewed: Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008
Rotten Tomato Rating: 80%
People gave it 3.5 stars (out of 4)
Mine: Lower, I think...60% ?
EW: B- cag: B-
Genre: Black Comedy
PG-13 (1 hr. 36 min.)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS ACADEMY AWARD, Feb, 2009 - Penelope Cruz
Woody Allen's newest. Barcelona.
Romantic comedy? Hmmmmmmm.
Fantastic performances from all the leads: Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, and Penelope Cruz. Beautiful people. Beautiful setting. Hall's part was very Woody Allen-y. She was great. So was Bardem, a doll to look at, smoldering...reminds me lot of Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Penelope Cruz was .... Penelope Cruz. And I never realized Scarlett Johansson's lips were quite so. . . . full. Okay a lot of elipses here. But I've done a great deal of mulling about this movie today.
Cristina (Johannsson) and Vicky (Hall) are best friends spending their two-month summer vacation in Barcelona with an American couple (Patricia Clarkson is the female, not sure of the husband). One night, enjoying dinner in a cozy restaurant, they are approached by sizzling artist Juan Antonio (Bardem), who propositions them. They go for it, Cristina wholeheartedly, and Vicky kicking and screaming. Well, they both end up having a fling with (and falling in love with) said hunky Spaniard. His crazy (literally) ex-wife, Maria Elena (Cruz), who he still loves, enters the picture and really shakes things up.
There are no happy endings here. My favorite character, Vicky, seems destined for a dull, boring, existence from which she'll never be able to extricate herself. Cristina's never going to know what she wants. She'll continue as a dabbler, in love, in art, in everything she tries. Maria Elena is going to kill herself soon, and probably take Juan Antonio with her. What fun.
Actually, it was an okay movie. It was narrated throughout, which I didn't care for, finding it disconcerting and unneeded. Okay, these are all my humble opinion (humble?), but this is what I've been chewing on all day. I may add more once I've chewed even further!
(8/29) A comment , part of a positive review of the movie: "One of the year's most charming and sly works -- as well as perhaps the saddest film in the filmmaker's entire oeuvre." Someone agrees with me!
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