BARCELONA
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1994 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Whit Stillman who wrote and
directed METROPOLITAN has brought back to of that cast
in a story of entangled love affairs and US-European
relations in the early part of the 80s. The dialog,
while still fun, is a bit less clever than it was in the
previous film. The story is not as much fun, but still
enjoyable. Rating +1 (-4 to +4)
In the early 1980s Ted is a marketing executive posted to Barcelona. He is very serious, very dedicated, very straight-laced, and takes trendy "marketing philosophy" just a bit too seriously. In his off hours he dates some of the beautiful women who act as hostesses at the local trade show, but avoids getting closely attached to the women and their anything-goes lifestyle. One night on his doorstep shows up his cousin Ted, a smooth talking but inconsiderate navy officer who is a bit of a jerk. Fred is in Barcelona playing diplomat and paving the way for a visit of the U.S. Sixth Fleet. This gives Fred an opportunity to visit Ted, who is himself less than enthused about the visit. Fred enjoys inventing stories for Ted's girl friends including claiming that Ted wears masochistic leather underwear and is into sexual perversion. The only thing that Fred seems serious about is his love of the United States, but that can be a problem with anti-US feeling running very high in Europe and even occasional terrorist attacks against Americans.
At first Fred seems to the viewer to have a sort of Auntie Mame charm, playing his wild practical jokes. But soon we begin to see why Ted is less than pleased to have Fred around. Fred's mishaving becomes something less than endearing and eventually rather irritating. Fred's jokes take on a more serious tone, and his lack of diplomacy and jingoist attitudes cause problems for others and himself.
Whit Stillman, who wrote and directed 1990's METROPOLITAN, has returned with another film about smooth-talking young intellectuals. Taylor Nichols and Chris Eigenman--both from METROPOLITAN--are Ted and Fred. Stillman, who won an Oscar nomination for the previous film, has taken much the same sort of dialog, but has woven into the story politics sex and politics. Stillman's screenplay, of course, concentrates on good dialog. In fact it is unrealistically good dialog--it is doubtful that anybody really speaks this well off the cuff and to some extent that makes the films less believable . It is difficult at times to believe that these are real people as eloquent as Stillman's characters are. The plot also has a number of nice ironies, but the story line is a little thin. Like Woody Allen's MANHATTAN this is a film that make great visual use of the city in which it is set but wears out any curiosity we might have about who is going to end up living with whom. This film needs a little more than that to keep us caring. It needs a strong plot and there it falls down. Much of the film is about Ted's attitude toward Fred, and Fred just does not seem worth us caring about him. Nor is one sure how accurate is BARCELONA's depiction of US-Spanish relations.
In general the film is entertaining but not as rewarding as it might be. Parts almost fall into the level of fluff, and cliched fluff at that. My rating would be +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
.
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