Woody Allen's Disdain for Seemingly Everything...and it's Brilliant

Rating: 7/10 (14 November 2013)

At first I couldn't get into this movie, but now I officially love Vicky Cristina Barcelona. It took me three viewings to fully appreciate this film, but now I can say it's simply outstanding. Great performances all around, cinematography, music, location shooting. I think of VCB as a "tormented tourist's postcard." It's as though tourists cannot handle the "real thing" that is an artist's often chaotic life: full of fits and starts and sends them running away from what they believed they wanted. It's as cynical a look at the romanticism of being involved with an artist as I've ever seen.
The movie truly takes off when Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz) enters the picture. From then on, I bought into her crazed, "tortured artist" melodrama though I found the kiss scene with Johannson to be a total failure; Penelope Cruz is definitely not interested in kissing girls (and neither is Johannson)! Javier "Speak English" Bardem plays the artistic stud well and his voice and appearance remind me of a young Raul Julia. The kind of men that Vicky (Rebecca Hall; also excellent) and Judy (Patricia Clarkson; wonderful and hotter than her younger co-stars)are involved with are tepid businessmen not unlike my brother-in-law; decent and "safe" guys, but certainly not compelling.
In regards to Cristina's disdain for American life, I realize Woody's gone on record via his films with his admiration for Europe, yet I still felt that everything being said by the narrator was sarcastic. I'm not sure why, but the entire film had a caustic tone and I felt that everything was being flayed, even the things that Allen usually revers and that there was disdain for every character. VCB is among Allen's most vicious, I think.
The final scene with Cristina and Vicky walking through the airport, both with "damaged" looks on their faces, is brilliant.