Girls Gone Wild in Barcelona

Rating: Null/10 (4 September 2008)

Or Beautiful People Doing Beautiful Things. This film features a gorgeous cast but luckily they can all act, making for an all round pleasurable experience. I enjoyed it immensely for its humour, originality and great writing, as well as a generous amount of casual sex and great views of Barcelona.
Two young women arrive for the summer in Barcelona (one of the world's great cities  I recommend it), planning on staying with old friend Judy Nash (Patricia Clarkson, excellent as always). Vicky (Rebecca Hall, who I enjoyed in The Prestige. She seems equally at home playing Brits or Americans) is engaged to be married. She's intelligent but cautious, traditional and more than a little skeptical. Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) is restless, artsy without any direction, perhaps shallow, rootless. Cristina is looking for some kind of ultimate love affair, while Vicky is more practical, settling for what she sees as a 'good enough' relationship with reliable Doug back in the USA.
At a gallery opening they see Javier Bardem's Juan Antonio from a distance; he's an artist, well known, successful and very, very sexy. Later in a local restaurant, he approaches them and asks them to fly to Oviedo with him for a weekend of good food, good wine and, hopefully, good sex. In an amusing scene, we see cynical Vicky telling him exactly why they won't go with him, while Cristina tells him with everything including her body language, exactly why they will. Juan Antonio is charmingly upfront. There is no pretense, no coyness. Just "Life is short, let's make the most of it and share some pleasure." He is quite irresistible. I think whoever is managing Javier Bardem's career is doing a really good job, because coming after his psychopathic killer in No Country for Old Men, this is a glorious part for him. Yes, it's a male fantasy, but with a guy this good, it could be a female fantasy too.
They fly to Oviedo where Cristina gets sick and takes to her bed, while Vicky and Juan Antonio find a surprising amount in common. Later, back in Barcelona, Vicky throws herself into art study and language lessons, determined not to let her quickie with Juan interfere with her life plan, while Cristina moves in with Juan Antonio and takes up photography. Everything goes swimmingly until his erratic (and erotic) ex wife Maria Elena, played fabulously by Penelope Cruz, shows up. Cruz is just so much better in Spanish than English. She and Juan Antonio have a 'Can't live with her and can't live without her' type of relationship, and at one time she has tried to kill him. Talented but manic, there is a question over how much Juan Antonio owes of his own success to her.
The women get along in a ménage a trois for a while but Cristina gets restless again and decides to move on, and Maria Elena is never far from eruption. Vicky meanwhile is reviewing her own life plan, with Doug turning up in Spain.
One reason why this movie is so satisfying is that all the peripheral characters are so good. Juan Antonio's father, who writes beautiful poetry but decides to punish the world he despises by keeping it to himself; Patricia Clarkson's Judy, who is suffocating in her loveless marriage but is too scared to move on alone; Doug, Vicky's fiancé (Chris Messina, who is new to me.) It would have been easy to make Doug a figure of fun, but he's not, he's just a nice guy, decent but not very exciting. Every character is well written and their inter relationships keep us interested to the end. The use of voice over is never over done, and the sub titles are used to great effect, with Juan Antonio yelling "Speak English" at his ex wifein Spanish.
This is not a movie of great social importance, no one is poor or really struggling to survive. Everyone is pretty and rich. But neither is it superficial and trite and there isn't a special effect or over wrought explosion in sight. It's witty, grown up and very entertaining, certainly one of Woody Allen's best efforts in a while. I like most of the work he's done since he went to Europe to film, but I think this one is the best to date.