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Vicky Cristina Barcelona evokes the sense of a seemingly perfect summer’s dream with the dizzying sights of Spanish architecture, endless golden sunlight, warm balmy nights, romantic candlelit dinners and Spanish guitar music. Two women, Vicky and Cristina, are in Barcelona for the summer. Vicky and Cristina may be best friends but are vastly different individuals, especially when it comes to love and men. Vicky (Rebecca Hall) is the sensible and practical one of the two women. She is conventional in her life choices and is soon to be engaged to her decent but dull fiancé. Vicky is in Barcelona partly because of her academic work. Her best friend Cristina (Scarlett Johannson), however, is impulsive and uncertain about what she wants in life but claims that she does know what she does not want. Having just broken up with yet another boyfriend, she is in Barcelona for a change of scenery.
Vicky and Cristina soon become overwhelmed by the exhilarating sense of being in a foreign city far removed from their comparably dreary lives in America. Intoxicated by the sights, food and wine, they become entwined in a love-lust relationship with the smooth and virile local artist, Juan Antonio Gonzalo (Javier Bardem). As a free-thinker and a reveller in human pleasures, Juan Antonio approaches Vicky and Cristina in a restaurant late one night and invites them to spend the weekend with him in the Spanish town of Oviedo where they would eat well, drink good wine and make love. This proposition marks the start of the summer tempest of love, sex and the thrill of something refreshing and adventurous in the movie.
What follows is a messy, awkward affair where Vicky, Cristina and the eccentric Juan Antonio become sexually involved with each other. Vicky becomes the silent third party in the love triangle and struggles with her guilt over her feelings for Juan Antonio.
The movie then recedes into predictability and clichéd circumstances as the common love triangle plot has long since been exhausted. It borders on even being unexciting as the characters go off on their sightseeing tours. We, the audience, are taken almost unwillingly along the ride, although admittedly fascinated by the beautiful sights, and are forced to endure what seems like a tourism promotional movie. The action only picks up with the appearance of Penélope Cruz as Maria Elena, the ex-wife whose marriage to Juan Antonio ended in rumoured violence and attempted murder. Penélope Cruz utterly blows both the characters and the audience away with her convincing and superb acting as the passionate dark-haired beauty. Cruz successfully portrays a volatile and impassioned individual, brimming with the tortured feelings of an artistic genius. She rages through the movie with her frequent bursts of hysteria and paranoia. Cruz’s fiery dark eyes, facial expressions and body movements intensify her character’s commanding presence on screen and add to the conviction that she is the impassioned and potentially violent Maria Elena. Cruz has played Maria Elena so well that it seems that the whole framework and success of the movie rest on her acting capabilities. It is hardly surprising that Penélope Cruz won the BAFTA® Best Supporting Actress for her role as Maria Elena recently.
On the surface, Vicky Cristina Barcelona seems to be superficially about sex, lust and passion. However, there are underlying themes of the unfruitful search for love and meaning in life. Vicky and Cristina end up where they first started in the beginning; Cristina is still looking for love and Vicky lives life with her dull fiancé. This summer fantasy in the sunny, wine-soaked Barcelona leaves both individuals disappointed and resigned to their lives. The movie is a celebration of the indulgence in human pleasures, spontaneity and the sense of adventure as perhaps a reinvigorating answer to mundane reality. Why should we not indulge ourselves in physical and visual pleasures? Javier Bardem’s character, Juan Antonio, says, “Life is short. Life is dull. Life is full of pain. And this is a chance for something special.”
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