Does the Woody Allen picture, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), deserve the warm reaction provided by many of the reviewers? I’m afraid not, despite its being somewhat superior to other Allen items.

This is primarily because of the premise: “Two friends on a summer holiday in Spain become enamored with the same painter, unaware that his ex-wife, with whom he has a tempestuous relationship, is about to re-enter the picture” (imdb.com). The two friends (Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall) are American and visiting Catalonia; the painter (Javier Bardem) is a naughty lover boy. The girls are not boring, as I think the painter is, but everyone here is so blasted morally weak the film loses plausibility. Hall’s Vicky, for example, begins to love Bardem more than her amiable new husband. The painter’s ex-wife (Penelope Cruz), believed by some to be a “genius,” is emotionally weak, at the end jealously wielding a pistol. When the pistol goes off, the bullet strikes Vicky’s hand but seems not to cause her any genuine pain, which is nonsense.

As ever, much of the dialogue is pathetically bad, and the successful acting of the principal players would be easier to appreciate if the characters were a bit more than Allen’s puppets. We see him, not them. At least there are some great shots of Barcelona, but it is not enough.

In Like Crazy, from 2011, Felicity Jones is natural and likable in the role of Anna, an English girl attending college in Los Angeles. Anton Yelchin is graceful and credible as Jacob, the American student she is quickly attracted to. She wants to know him, a love affair is born. Themes include long-distance relationships, the testing of the heart, fear and uncertainty when a marriage partner is not fully known or understood. As it happens, Anna deliberately overstays her visa in America to avoid betraying, in a way, herself and Jacob but, later in the film, there are other actions which flatly feel like betrayals to both of them.

LC is a pretty decent film, especially if one has not seen an abundance of romantic dramas. Directed with too many fancy touches by Drake Doremus, its astute screenplay was co-written by him and Ben York Jones. Nudity is absent and profane talk is kept at a minimum. (Sex is another matter.) Alex Kingston and Oliver Muirhead are notably savvy as Anna’s parents.

Alexander Payne’s The Descendants (2011) is not quite as good as his Sideways (2005), but better than all his other films.  It partly concerns when the knowledge about other people ineluctably oppresses the heart and mind, and when such knowledge is withheld for other people’s good.  Adapted from a novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, it is superbly put together with smart, appealing cinematography, compassion without heavy pathos, and acting that deepens the proceedings.  This last emanates from George Clooney, Beau Bridges, Shailene Woodley and a splendid Judy Greer.

(The photo is of Alexander Payne.)

Image by Pink Cow Photography via Flickr

Il Posto (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Adult life has begun for Domenico (Sandro Panseri); he goes out to look for a job in a corporation.  And he gets one in Ermanno Olmi‘s marvelous Il Posto (The Job, 1961), albeit the point of the film is that urban organization and anonymity are, at bottom, frightful.  It is this that Domenico encounters upon leaving his modest house for the city of Milan.  What’s more, he both meets a girl he likes (Loredana Detto) and, correlatively, experiences urban loneliness.  But one must work, even if it’s a dreary office job lasting a lifetime, and although it may seem to Domenico that Antonietta, the girl, is likely to permanently slip away from him, this is anything but a foregone conclusion.  Hers is an attitude that should lift his spirits.

Miss Detto must have lifted Olmi’s spirits, for he married her and is still married to her. . . Though the director considered Il Posto “harsh,” it is far from utterly bleak or pessimistic.  It is a trenchant achievement even better—considerably so—-than Olmi’s thoroughly religious Tree of Wooden Clogs.

(In Italian with English subtitles)

Il Posto (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Adult life has begun for Domenico (Sandro Panseri); he goes out to look for a job in a corporation.  And he gets one in Ermanno Olmi‘s marvelous Il Posto (The Job, 1961), albeit the point of the film is that urban organization and anonymity are, at bottom, frightful.  It is this that Domenico encounters upon leaving his modest house for the city of Milan.  What’s more, he both meets a girl he likes (Loredana Detto) and, correlatively, experiences urban loneliness.  But one must work, even if it’s a dreary office job lasting a lifetime, and although it may seem to Domenico that Antonietta, the girl, is likely to permanently slip away from him, this is anything but a foregone conclusion.  Hers is an attitude that should lift his spirits.

Miss Detto must have lifted Olmi’s spirits, for he married her and is still married to her. . . Though the director considered Il Posto “harsh,” it is far from utterly bleak or pessimistic.  It is a trenchant achievement even better—considerably so—-than Olmi’s thoroughly religious Tree of Wooden Clogs.

(In Italian with English subtitles)