Sex and Lucia: Grade B

B
Sex and Lucia (2001)
Paz Vega, Tristán Ulloa; writer and director Julio Medem. (Spanish, subtitled)

I’ve been charmed by Paz Vega ever since 10 Items or Less (2006), so I looked at this one, which was among her first half dozen roles on the big screen, at the tender age of 26. Even then she had all the mysterious, earnest, and intense looks, glances and gestures that make her so compelling. Comparisons to Penelope Cruz cannot be avoided.

This is not a great movie, serving mainly as a vehicle for writerly self-aggrandizement. It is a story about a writer who, perhaps unwittingly, is writing the story that we are watching unfold, except sometimes he is also unknowingly acting it out. In the end, it doesn’t add up, and gets so caught up in its tricky self-references that after a while the viewer just tunes out, listens to the melodic language and watches the lovely scenery, good acting, and the mesmerizing Vega.

The cinematography is beautiful, some of it stunning, where color saturation is pushed so hard clouds become pink. In some scenes the film is almost solarized to give the impression of intense heat. Locations are gorgeous, sets are interesting, especially the country house, and the costumes are good.

As for sex, well, there is considerable naked writhing, but apart from the odd nipple or buttock, there is really nothing to look at. The characters are hypersexual at times, but hey, they are young. That’s really not the point of the movie. Rather, it is the complex characters and convincing acting.

The Limits of Control: Grade C

C
The Limits of Control (2009)
Isaach De Bankolé, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, Gael García Bernal, John Hurt; Writer & Director Jim Jarmusch. (English, Spanish, and French with subtitles)

This movie has no story; it is like a student’s exercise in filming the same scene in several different ways. Scenes are well staged, excellently photographed, directed, and acted.

A tall, bow-legged black man (De Bankolé) walks around Madrid, Seville, and other cities in Spain in a shiny suit, carrying a duffel bag (an amazing duffel bag that holds at least two other nicely pressed shiny suits). In each city or district of a city, he waits for a couple of days in some apartment. We watch him wait: he lies on the bed, looks out the window, does Tai Chi exercises. Pretty exciting stuff. Mercifully we do not have to watch him brush his teeth.

Then he goes to a café and waits some more. A stranger appears and gives him a small box of wooden matches. He exchanges it for his own box of matches. The stranger gives a cryptic speech but the protagonist remains silent. The stranger departs. The protagonist opens the new box of matches, reads a matrix of numbers and letters on a slip of paper, and eats the paper. Then he goes to the next appointment and the entire sequence is repeated, at least six times, maybe as many as ten times. There are small variations on the sequence, but that’s about it for the movie. He does manage to strangle Bill Murray at the very end, for no reason at all.

The big name stars each appear in one of these small scenes, so that’s no excuse to seek out the movie. Music is good, especially the Flamenco. The film could be a satire on the international espionage genre, but lacking satirical force. It is a comedy without humor, a drama without drama. There are some allusions to the Sergio Leone Spaghettis with the facial close-ups. The repetition does create a sense of time slowed down.

The movie is like a writer’s notebook or an artist’s sketchpad. Variations on a scene are played out to see what they look like. Some of the scenes are visually memorable, but it all adds up to nothing. It will be of interest to film students, but not a wider audience.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Grade B

B
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Patricia Clarkson. Writer-Director Woody Allen.

This is classic Woody Allen. When the four main characters are walking and talking on a Barcelona street and one objects to another’s “facile categorical imperative,” it could have been Annie Hall or Manhattan. Woody Allen is an acquired taste, but I have acquired.

Single girls Hall and Johansson (Vicky and Cristina) vacation in Spain for a couple of summer months at the home of a friend (Clarkson). They are picked up in a bar by a handsome stranger (Bardem). Vicky is offended by his proposition to go away for the weekend, but Cristina is game. They both end up going but only one of them succumbs. A narration moves the story along in great leaps until we find Cristina living with the man, who is an abstract painter. (He paints only in orange and brown tones to keep with the pallette of the movie). Vicky’s fiancé joins her from New York. But then the painter’s crazy ex-wife returns (Cruz) and all the relationships take new directions.

As in other Woody Allen movies of this genre, it is an illumination of the human condition, in this case, why love is so hard to find and hard to keep. Vicki has opted for the Manhattan businessman and looks forward to a suburban house with Persian carpets, while Cristina rejects conformity and searches for, as she says, “something more.” But as ever, the heart has its reasons that reason does not know.

The characters are not well-developed people, just placeholders for Allen’s storytelling. Hall even has to do the stuttering Woody Allen shtick through most of the film, which is either Allen being egocentric or reveals a dearth of character ideas. Also true to form, all the characters are immensely wealthy, well-educated and idle, all neurotic about relationships. What holds the movie together are the beautiful faces, beautiful scenery and photography, excellent lighting, directing, editing and music. It is perfection in the craft of movie-making, even though it has no point and even though the characters are only two dimensional. Woody Allen is so good he doesn’t need no stinking plot or characters!

Rebecca Hall, does a wonderful acting job but it's odd that she looks so much like Scarlett. However, Hall can take a close camera full in the face. Scarlett never looks comfortable when the camera is stealing her soul. Hall can stare right into its evil eye. Bardem gave a wonderfully sensitive performance, especially compared to No Place for Old Men, but Cruz is the one who pops off the screen. Even disheveled and with no makeup, and speaking only Spanish or Catalan, she is riveting, for reasons I cannot fathom. Patricia Clarkson proves again what an underrated actor she is. So everything about this movie is excellent except there is no plot and no characters and the story is lame. Only Woody Allen can pull that off.