Vicky Cristina Barcelona


I recently went to go see the latest offering from Woody Allen, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and came away pleasantly surprised. The essentially question that Woody Allen poses is does romance equate to eternal happiness? The film dissects the root of this question through its two female protagonists Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlet Johansson). They are polar opposites in terms of disposition. Vicky is the prototypical WASP female. She seems to have been designed to be a Stepford wife. Cristina is seems to be the embodiment of passion. Her passion seems to lead her in many different avenues, all of which eventually leave her unsatisfied. At the beginning of the film the narrator states that, “She didn’t know what she wanted. She did know what she didn’t want.” What she didn’t want seems the very fabric that Vicky’s life is made of.
Conformity and the results of conformity seem to be a prevailing theme in the film. Vicky believes that adherence to the “correct lifestyle”, which means marriage to someone financially stable and career driven will lead to an existence which is fulfilling. I think Woody Allen mocks this formula for happiness through the relationship with Vicky’s aunt, Judy (Patricia Clarkson), and her husband Mark (Kevin Dunn). Mark is a younger and slimmer version of Vicky’s fiancé Doug (Chris Messina). Vicky is visiting her aunt while vacationing in Barcelona, Spain for the summer. She is getting her masters in Catalan Identity.
While out with Cristina, Vicky runs into the very exotic Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) who seems to be the male counterpart to Cristina. He is an artist with a past. I suppose women would find him attractive if you are into perfect features, foreign accents, and artists. Psh! Needless to say, Cristina finds Juan Antonio utterly captivating and Vicky finds him to be brutish and hopeless. When they encounter Juan Antonio again at a restaurant he politely asks them to accompany him to the town of Oviedo where they can eat great food, see the beautiful architecture, listen to some good music, and maybe cap the weekend off by having sex. Cristina agrees and reluctantly drags Vicky along for the ride.
Cristina cannot physically fulfill her desire for Juan Antonio thanks to a nasty ulcer she develops. This allows for Juan Antonio and Vicky to get to know each other better. What is interesting about their relationship is the two contrasting philosophies on romance. Juan Antonio believes that the whole idea of romance is contrived and that human beings must surrender to their primal urges. Since we are prey to said urges it is impossible to maintain any semblance of the normalcy that Vicky seems to crave so badly. Vicky sees love as a mathematical equation that can be solved and must be correctly solved to guarantee happiness. Needless to say, that Juan Antonio’s charms and the sounds of the Spanish guitar eventually win Vicky over and she lets her guard down as they have a night to remember.
I will not divulge too much more of the plot, but I will say that I found the film both fascinating and alarming. I was fascinated because the construction of the film, like most of Woody Allen’s films, is predicated on a philosophic question that does not have an absolute answer. Vicky and Cristina’s journey does not have a conclusive end at the end of the film. What I found alarming is that Woody Allen’s critique of normalcy really made me feel uncomfortable as a “straight edge”. Everything that I have ever known about being a good man: good morals, good job, very reliable are seen as passé characteristics of a boring person. Moreover, I contemplated was monogamy itself a passé concept.
I often hear that marriage is the “next logical step” in a relationship. That in order to validate a relationship legally, and before God, is to enter a state of holy matrimony. I often wonder, like Cristina, if that lifestyle is a contradiction in terms. How can a person satisfy another person for several decades? The world is a multitude of possibilities and it seems kind of absurd that I would want to restrict myself emotionally to a single individual, let alone physically. I mean………….think about it. The same face looking at you every day for forty years. Kind of scary isn’t it?
An even deeper question, what if you are boring and your spouse is with you because you are “safe”? Do people sacrifice passion and spontaneity for safety? Is “the nice guy/girl” actually not the right guy/girl? I don’t think anyone wants to be an insurance policy. I know personally that I rather exist in total isolation that enter into a relationship/marriage that is false and my mate settles for me. I don’t want to be settled for. I want to be craved and have someone have a genuine desire/passion for me on multiple levels.
Life shouldn’t be predictable but it should also not be a perpetual hedonistic episode. Love is a gift and I don’t know how many people it can be shared with and still remain valid. I always thought that every relationship takes something out of you. The longer the relationship the more substantial the emotional investment is. At least that is usually the way it works out. Juan Antonio, Cristina, and Juan Antonio’s ex wife María Elena (Penélope Cruz) all are so obsessed with living in the now and succumbing to all their instincts, both positive and negative, that their relationships are pure chaos.
I know I am playing Devil’s advocate , but a life without any direction is subject to nothingness. I believe the film shows that while there is some satisfaction in having a life full of lust and passion that those qualities do not necessarily guarantee anything substantial romantically. The film tries to invert the standard definition of a prototypical relationship and create one in which Cristina, Juan Antonio, and María Elena all exist in a type of art think tank/commune/bohemian fantasy land. The make out scene between Cruz and Johansson was a nice change of pace but I find lesbianism to be quite the waste of “talent”.
I will not burden/irritate those reading this with the details of the ending. The story, needless to say, does not have a “storybook ending”. The viewer is left with a sense of catharsis which is both pleasant and humanizing in a very scary way. What I love about the movie is that it is not tidy. It is very messy, as love often is and it is not predictable. Anyone who knows anything about Woody Allen and his philosophy on romance knows that even his romances never end up in the conventional manner. The only problem I had with it had nothing to do with the film itself but more with its underlying message that conformity and security are utterly boring and very unromantic. The nice guys finish last parable isn’t exactly true in the film, but they certainly do seem pretty lame.