Rate It
|
||||||||||||||||
Rating Averages
My Friends |
Not rated. () |
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
All Flixster |
(11275) |
9544 |
13754 |
Female |
(4228) |
3579 |
5158 |
Male |
(7047) |
5965 |
8596 |
More Like This
If you liked this, then you'll also probably like...
Got another recommendation for someone who liked this movie? Add it to the list!
Got an opinion? Use the buttons to vote on all the suggestions people have added.
If lots of people vote, the best suggestions will rise to the top.
| Scoop (57%) |
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Annie Hall (100%) |
|
|
| Match Point (80%) |
|
|
| Everyone Says I Love You (100%) |
|
|
| Closer (75%) |
|
|
Plot:
Vicky and Cristina, two young American tourists, spend a summer in Spain and meet a flamboyant artist and his beautiful, but insane, ex-wife. Vicky is straight-laced and about to be married. Cristina ...( read more
)
Meet Other Fans
My Friends Said...
Vicky Cristina Barcelona Recent Reviews
Register or sign-in to see your friends' reviews !
Recent Reviews
-
MCT:January 1, 2009I've heard many good things, so I'll just have to see it. It's also nice to see that Woody Allen features some women with proper figures; they have, like, natural breasts.
-
MCT:January 1, 2009
"Life is the ultimate work of art"
Woody Allen's romantic drama Vicky Cristina Barcelona stars Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson as best friends Vicky and Cristina. As the movie opens, the pair of twentysomethings travel to Barcelona so that Vicky can work on her post-graduate degree. The two meet the charming artist Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), who offers to take them on a vacation and make love to them. Vicky, being a happily engaged young woman, refuses, but Cristina is eager for this life experience. A love triangle begins to coalesce, and things grow more complicated when Juan Antonio's passionate, unstable ex, Maria Elena (Penélope Cruz), arrives to stay after a suicide attempt.
Review
"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is an eccentric film about the meaning of love, which builds an entertaining scenery for open-minded movie-goers, but fails to impress as much as Allen's most acclaimed work. Outstanding performances, mostly by Spanish actors Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz make burn the screen. However, once again, like in almost every other film by this filmmaker, the real star is the story itself. Then, Woody Allen consolidates as the greatest screenwriter in American cinema history.
The film provides a twisted and unconventional look of human relationships, and is joined by a hilarious narrative and joyful music, as well as beautiful pictures of the European city where it is located. Undoubtlessly, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a film to celebrate, and a triumph for Woody Allen's career. For sure, it's the healthiest Woody we've seen in the last decade, one that dares to make this film a whole new vision of human feelings and the ways people react to the ups and downs of life. -
MCT:December 31, 2008I have never in my entire life seen a crazy psychobitch as charming, sexy and hilarious as Penelope Cruz.
I think I'm in love with her as much as I'm in love with this movie: my first Woody Allen experience, can you believe it? -
MCT:December 29, 2008A Hillarious woody-allen sex-romp. But really it's Penelope Cruz's show in a career best perfromance as the crazy ex-wife Maria Elena.
-
MCT:December 27, 2008
"We are meant for each other and not meant for each other. It's a contradiction."
The fourth (and apparently final, since I hear he's back in the States) film in what will be know in the future as Woody Allen's European period, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is the closest to what fans of his classic relationship comedies keep hoping the 73-year-old filmmaker will produce again. It's a light, entertaining and romantic film without the strained zaniness of Scoop or the predictability of Cassandra's Dream, filled with mild humour, gorgeous actors, some wonderfully drawn characters and a lovely, lovely Spanish setting.
In keeping with Allen's late-career embrace of sensuality over awkwardness, Barcelona is a visual treat from start to finish, revelling in the beauty of both its locations (Barcelona, of course, but also Oviedo) and its stars. Rebecca Hall and recent Allen muse Scarlett Johansson are the title characters, two of those typical Americans spending a summer abroad. Vicky (Hall) is working on a master's thesis on Catalan identity (an interest that apparently began with architect Antoni Gaudí), while Cristina (Johansson) is just hoping the change of scenery will help her "find herself."
Their circumstances and states of mind are described by an omniscient male narrator in a technique that is jarring at first but soon gives the film the tone of a particularly sharp and observant short story. The narrator, for example, encapsulates Cristina's flightiness perfectly in his introduction of her, in which he explains that she has just spent a year writing, directing and acting in a 12-minute film that she absolutely hates. Snide remarks like these pop up occasionally, always with measured delivery but showing a level of skepticism (though never condescension) toward some of the characters' choices.
Staying with Vicky's distant relatives (played by Patricia Clarkson and Kevin Dunn), the two women soon meet up with charming, easy.going Spanish painter Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), who bluntly proposes bedding both of them during their first conversation. Engaged Vicky finds him off-putting initially, but Cristina immediately swoons, and soon ends up his devoted lover. Things continue at a frothy but sometimes sluggish pace, and just when the film threatens to lose its spark, something great happens: Penélope Cruz arrives to liven things up as Juan Antonio's ex-wife Maria Elena.
Cruz is fantastic as the passionate, mentally unstable woman who always says (often in Spanish only, in a delightful, but subtle reference that few people will get, to the Spanish way of being) exactly what's on her mind, and her presence gives both Cristina and the film itself a reason to perk up. Maria Elena insinuates herself into Juan Antonio and Cristina's relationship, leading to the understandably over-hyped (and really rather tame) threesome that made horny bloggers go crazy. Allen may be more open to exploring the sexiness of romance these days, but he still isn't interested in anything lascivious, and his depiction of the trio's relationship is more about their individual intimacy issues than it is about hot girl-on-girl action.
Meanwhile, Vicky nurses a slow-burning flame for Juan Antonio while spending time with her dull, wet-blanket fiancé, Doug (Chris Messina), such a generic corporate tool that he works for a company called Global Enterprises and seemingly talks about nothing but golf. As a character, he's a cipher, but that's part of the point - Vicky is marrying an empty suit rather than pursuing the vibrant, unpredictable Juan Antonio. Hall, a rather surprising casting choice (a British actress who appeared in her first film only two years ago) plays the closest thing the film has to the traditional Allen surrogate, and she makes Vicky's dilemma real and more problematic than it would appear on the surface. Johansson, somewhat out of her depth in previous Allen outings, imbues Cristina with the right mix of infuriating and endearing. As for Bardem, he's appropriately sensual, but also likable, which is important in plausibly setting up why Vicky and Cristina are so drawn to him.
It's Cruz who runs away with the film, though, and holds it together when it starts to feel insubstantial. Allen envelops his audience in sensuality, makes it salivate, and then uses it to offer some bitter life lessons. Still, for a romance in which nobody seems to end up getting what they want, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is deceptively satisfying, and leaves you with a sense of hope, however false. Think of that feeling you get when Annie Halls ends. Only there's no rainy New York, only sunny Barcelona. -
MCT:January 7, 2009
A movie brimming with beautiful people and beautiful scenery; there's a contagious enthusiasm as this movie whirs through the sights and sounds of Barcelona.
Smart, sexy and so alive with desire you can practically hear it sizzle.
Comments
This board looks lonely. Be the first to talk about "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" !
