Heavy Handed But Enjoyable

I finally got around to watching Vicky Cristina Barcelona last night*. I was kind of disappointed with it even though I did enjoy watching it.

I mostly didn't like the heavy handed exposition in both the narration and the dialogue and the false dichotomy that was set up between 'artistic people' and 'sensible people'. I don't mind narration in general, and at times I even like it (Pushing Daisies was one such instance), but just about everything the narrator said was repeated by the characters at least twice in dialogue. We did not need to hear that Juan Antonio just went through a tumultuous divorce three times, once is more than enough.

Also, I felt like the differences in character between Vicky and Cristina and Juan Antonio and Vicky's husband were, in addition to being overly explained, oversimplified. I much preferred how Woody Allen showed in Melinda and Melinda the differences of character of one person in two different situations. In that film it seemed like it would be much easier to make a black and white contrast between the comedy Melinda and the tragedy Melinda but it was much subtler than the passionate artist/pragmatic student setup in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. It also kind of annoyed me that the guy who played Vicky's husband (aka Claire's hot republican boyfriend from Six Feet Under) is continually being typecast as a wet blanket, square (see also Julie and Julia).

Additionally, it was distracting that Catalan culture played a major part in the film but it seemed like everyone was speaking Castilian.

Overall though, despite its flaws, the performances are what really saved the film; specifically Javier and Penelope's**.

Also, I still really want to go to Spain.

*I did not watch this last night but I had watched it the night before I wrote this. According to the time stamp I watched it on July 14th which is still long after the movie actually came out anyway. Better late then never.

**When I watched the film I hadn't seen Rebecca Hall in anything before. Although I don't think her performance in this film stood up to Javier and Penelope's respective performances I did see her in Wide Sargasso Sea and she was absolutely incredible in that.