Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Vicky Christina Barcelona

Even though everybody and every scene was beautiful, I found Vicky Christina Barcelona barely watchable.

It is about two beautiful young women in Barcelona for the summer trying to figure out what they want in life, or rather, what they want in love.

I could have dealt with it a lot more if the actress who played Vicky (I can't remember her name) wasn't so bland and robotic and pretentious. I really hated her performance. Scarlett Johansen was almost too beautiful. It was just distracting. Then, also as always very beautiful but somehow less distractingly so was Penelope Cruz who gave a great performance and I was very happy to see her win at the Oscars. She was the spark of life in the film.

Also, I didn't find it funny. I don't think I laughed once.

When it comes down to it, even though he's done some movies that I loved (Crimes and Misdemeanors, Match Point, Zelig), I'm honestly not that crazy about Woody Allen. His sensibility grates on my nerves.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder, and laughter in the heart. I thought Rebecca Hall was utterly riveting in her role, as were Cruz and Johansson, but one of the things that I liked about Hall and Johansson is they have a very credible, down to earth kind of prettiness, whereas Cruz has this otherworldly weird extreme beauty, making them all very well cast for their roles. Maybe this is a culturally conditioned reaction to Cruz, who to Hispanic eyes may have a less exotic, rarefied kind of beauty. But the thing about the anglos is that - lovely though they are - they are the kind of nice looking girls one encounters quite frequently in life, so it surprises me that Diana finds their beauty alienating or distracting