Unimaginative fluff and zero comedy

Rating: 6/10 (28 February 2016)

This movie gets a 6/10, which is a passing grade. It's not terrible, not painful to watch, it can even be enjoyable at times, but make no mistake, this film is fluff. It's riddled with clichés of what people expect of Europe and Spain in particular. Everyone is just so sensual, artistic, living in the moment, passionate - life is just one never-ending candle-lit dinner, being serenaded by a guitar player, wine-tastings, art gallery openings, poetry readings and so on. That's life in Spain, where no one seems to work or have any other job other than being an artist.
The film shows two women with opposite personalities - one who knows what she wants and one who doesn't know what she wants. Things change when they visit Spain.
But despite all the fake artistic pretense, this is just a fluff movie. It's a summer love movie. Change the location to a beach and the characters would look absurd, contemplating leaving their lives behind to move to the beach. The dilemmas are unrealistic dilemmas. Life in Spain is not just strawberry pickings and wine-tastings, but none of that is shown. Spain is just an endless honeymoon and life in New York, although not shown, is so boring, busy, materialistic, consumerist, crowded and WASPy. There is no serious contemplation of the dilemma. One just contemplates leaving her husband but never wonders about how life would be like with her fling, just repeating "this is crazy" over and over. The other doesn't think, she just moves in with him, but then gets bored and moves on.
They both go back to how they were before - one doing whatever she wants but never satisfied and one overthinking things, over-analyzing everything and then doing exactly what she was going to do from the start. The man, whom they both had relationships with, goes back to how he was.
Nothing changes. It was just a "crazy summer" and everyone moves on. The only character development there is in this film is that one of the characters learned to become a better photographer that summer and learned how to process film in a dark room.
There's zero depth. Since it's also a "comedy" (not because of jokes, there are almost none), it just means not-serious. People have existential crises without actually thinking or suffering, couples fight without really fighting, suicide attempts, wife-beatings and attempted murders are brushed off so easily, treated so lightly as if they were "why did you wash my whites with a red shirt?" arguments.
This film is very similar to Match Point where someone had to choose between two women and two very different lives, each with their pros and cons. In this film, however, Spain has no cons and the New York is nothing but. So there is no actual dilemma. Life in a permanent honeymoon where there's more love and sex between ex-spouses (despite the wife-beatings and suicide attempts) than a newly-wed New York couple on their honeymoon.
Yet between the honeymoon and New York, between picnics and Wall Street, between exotic wines and large Starbucks coffee to go, both women choose to go back.
It's a fluffy summer film. The art, the museum visits, the guitar etc. could be easily replaced by beach experiences, snorkeling, fishing, skydiving, ukulele band, etc. It's just that drinking beer with a wife-beater on the beach as drinking foreign wines with a wife-beater in Spain.
There is more depth and emotion in Lost in Translation, a film in which nothing happens, than in this one where there are multiple relationships, an extra-marital affair, lesbian encounters, suicide attempts, murder attempt, wife-beating, severe food poisoning, and a whole bunch of characters.
For a film that talks about art, poetry and music so much, there is not one memorable song in the soundtrack, not one poem recited, no memorable paintings shown.
A better film would be one in which two Americans try to escape from the superficial, pretentious art scene in New York where people talk about what art is and isn't without actually discussing the art itself... and going to Spain where "real artists" are, only to discover that Spain has the same pretentious people and that real artists could be anywhere.
Instead, this is a movie where everyone and everything is a cliché, but some clichés reached the point of self-parody - the Spaniard is so unconventional that he lives with his ex-wife and they have threesomes with his girlfriends. The American husband is so conventional that he wants to get married twice - two weddings, because one is not conventional enough anymore.
The Spanish exes paint together, despite their differences. The American husband wants to golf on his honeymoon.
If you take this as a serious film, you'll be severely disappointed. If you treat it as fluff, you'll enjoy it. Lower your expectations and enjoy.