Last night when i finished watching Vicky Cristina Barcelona (VCB), a marvelous movie by Woody Allen, i was left 'unmoved', nothing much about it really intrigued me or made appreciate the genius behind it. But later this morning when i was surfing through imdb in search of some nice quotes from that movie i figured the allegory behind it. So here's my first review.
Set in the exotic backdrop of Barcelona and other beautiful little Spanish towns, Vicky Cristina Barcelona manages to evoke sensuality from the very begin. The actors chosen for the respective roles are very suitable and fits the frame very well. Vicky, a typical New Yorker, living a drafted life that revolves around her work and the 'stability' that she has chosen in her fiancée , Doug. Lacking any untamed passion and with a controlled heart she tends to be defensive when anything out of the odds starts disbalancing her sternness. Cristina, on the other hand is passionate, a free-thinker (as she claims), artistic and sensual. And whose purpose of life is inhabited in her search for something that doesn't constitute of things which 'don't want' in that person.
Juan Antonio, the charming Spanish painter, who lives free and intuitively invites Vicky and Cristina to his world of passion, art and the amiable i.e to the island of Oviedo. Juan Antonio has a history that refuses to leave him and travels with him. The history of his marriage to Maria Elena, a fierce woman, an epitome of the exotic and the outlandish. As they all spent their time in the intoxicating Oviedo each of the women start falling to prey to his unfamiliar enchanting disposition. Juan Antonio manages to sleep with both of them, though it takes him a little bit of an effort to do so with Nicky as she puts herself as an unattainable serious woman whereas he manages to make quite a connection with Cristina who gives in easily to his charm. Both the women return back to Barcelona where they were living with Nicky's aunt. Nicky is left pondering and unsettled after that night she had spent in Oviedo with the man she has just met. While she is left to think and rethink about her state Cristina gets a call from Juan Antonio inviting her to a wine tasting ceremony, and in no time they are living with each other and falling in love. Nicky is disturbed, not much as she doesn't allow herself that instability for which she has spent her entire life looking away from the things that incite, incite emotions that come into her or that escalate in her when she listens to the guitar playing at a Spanish cafe. She is left satiating. Cristina on the other hand is living the life that she always thought she had wanted for herself, free of anything that is defined, unrestrained and relaxed at same time. She is able to finally give voice to the conscious she always believed she had but was left muted.
Enter Maria Elena, the personification of genius and destruction, the incomplete love of Juan Antonio. When she comes to stay with him after trying to attempt suicide, she is filled with suspicion for Cristina, who is now the center of Juan Antonio's life. Soon she develops a liking for her, and calls her 'salt' of their (hers and Juan Antonio's) relationship, the part that was always missing and whose absence made their relationship turbulent. And with a few scenes of all three of them making out together, Maria Elena becomes a teacher for Cristina who helps her find her talent, photography and leads her to become confident and focused. In the backdrop life goes on discontentedly for Nicky, whose aunt tries and helps her to rescue from her fate in every way possible. Even though Nicky marries Doug, happiness is absent. One day she manages to meet Juan Antonio with the help of her aunt who threw a party just so both of them can clear whatever was it that they had left missing. And between that, Cristina leaves Juan Antonio and Maria Elena saying that she was happy but doesn't think that she wants this, she doesn't know what is it that she wants but she do know what is it that she 'doesn't want', and living the way she had been is not something that she can see herself doing for the rest of her life. Suffering from 'chronicle dissatisfaction' she leaves Juan Antonio and Maria Elena to suffer their earlier tribulations. So now, after the party Juan Antonio takes Nicky to her place and tries getting intimate with her which she initially resists but ultimately gives in, and just as she is about to fully do that Maria Elena fires at her.
Coming back to the way everything was, Vicky and Cristina come back home, and live the way they had before going to Barcelona. The message that Woody Allen is maybe trying to convey is that the effects and the depth of the materialistic world are so permanent and deep within us that even after having a taste of freedom it is hard to heal from them. Nicky is mechanical, in her plans and her emotions and something slightly out of the ordinary had the power to shake her world crazy. Cristina is incomplete, she looks at all the wrong places for her completion but even after testing all the waters she is unable realize where her happiness actually lies, her 'chronicle dissatisfaction' leaves her lonely.
But while I was thinking about 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona', the fact that surprised me most about myself that Juan Antonio and Maria Elena don't seem troubled to me at all, all the sympathy and the judgment is for Vicky and Cristina. They act like the mediums through which we learn about the lack of crudeness in the lives of our protagonists. Allen in a way, threw two women of the modern utilitarian world in the exotic, the mystic rawness of a foreign land and whatever they made of themselves there was a test-result of their sanity.
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