Review of Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) by Chads. — 16 Aug 2008
On their return trip back to Barcelona after vacationing in a small Italian town, Cristina(Scarlett Johannson) apologizes with frenetic profusion to her conspiring plane mates, for being protracted all-weekend long in a flophouse bed with a case of food poisoning.
Unstudied and without her customary self-awareness, this is Crisitna uncensored; she says things without running it through her Henry-Miller informed filter. In other words, she sounds like an uncultured American.
This in-flight tell is a harbinger of Cristina's epiphany that her free-spirit ethos better remain a theory, rather than be put into practice. She isn't cut out to be the Anais Nin-type who can share Juan(Javier Bardem) with Maria Elena(Penelope Cruz), like how the Cuban-French author apportioned a part of the "Tropic of Cancer" author's heart with his wife June.
Her friend Vicky(Rebecca Hall), on the other hand, the feminist whom Juan offends with his indecent proposal for a "menage a trois" with herself and Cristina, denies the attraction and magnetic pull of the painter's sexual aura, because she's been fully indoctrinated by an ideology that's supposed to function like an amulet against the evils of subjugation.
Even an intellectual such as Vicky enjoys being treated like a piece of meat, something to be drooled over before the ravishing. "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is marred somewhat by its Hugh Hefner-like sensibility, in which the filmmaker is like the Playboy mogul who puts out special issues like "The Girls of Mensa" and "The Girls of the Ivy League", alongside "The Girls of Hooters" and "The Girls of Wal-Mart" to reduce smart women by obfuscating their best assets.
Vicky, it can be said, is the cover girl for "The Girls of Catalan Scholarship".
This review of Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) was written by Chads. on 16 Aug 2008.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona has generally received positive reviews.
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