Australian Epic Is Derivative, Boring, and Goes on Forever

Baz Luhrmann, who hasn't made a full-length feature since 2001's manic Moulin Rouge! dropped a bomb this weekend. That bomb is called Australia. (I am not sure why this one doesn't have an exclamation point at the end.)

Australia is a film about a young Australian boy in the 1930s and the two people who come to see themselves as his parents. The young boy (whose name is Nullah) narrates the film and tells us that what is really important in life is storytelling. He will, therefore, tell us a story.

The story he tells us is one you've heard before. Uptight British lady comes to the Australian desert and lets her hair down, learning a lot about herself and the land in the process. She also falls in love with the rowdy, unkempt-but-incredibly-sexy ranch-hand who drives her cattle. Sound familiar? It isn't just that the general plot of Australia is completely predictable. Any audience member with half a brain can see every single plot point a mile away: to wit the sexy ranch-hand (Hugh Jackman) is immediately repulsed by the snobby British lady (Nicole Kidman); but then she impresses him with her occasional ability to stop her snobbery; she proves herself the equal of a man; she is allowed in to drink at the men-only bar (that's a plot point in Out of Africa too!); WWII arrives; everyone presumes one another dead; no one turns out to be dead; it all ends happily. And in case you are at any point confused as to the plot (as if you could be), Luhrmann provides stodgily written narration to help you along. This lasts two hours and forty-five minutes.

Not all of it is boring. There is a lovely sequence where the small boy (who falls in love with the song "Over the Rainbow") goes to the movies for the first time and gets to see The Wizard of Oz. Actually, Australia quotes The Wizard of Oz several times and whenever it does, the film tends to work just a little bit better. There is a rather funny sequence where Nicole Kidman sings "Over the Rainbow" and there is much talk of wishing, dreaming, rainbows, and going home. Australia, however, doesn't really want to be The Wizard of Oz; what it really wants to be is Gone with the Wind. It is neither.

The acting is rather bad all around; Hugh Jackman is passable, but the characters are all so stilted and cartoonish that it is hard to find any honesty anywhere in the film. The costumes are beautiful—easily the film's best attribute. The score is intelligent but it never really works emotionally. Almost nothing in the movie really works.

Two more things about the film, both of which have to do with Peter Jackson. While I was watching Australia, I kept thinking that Luhrmann had made a movie after Moulin Rouge! but I could not think of it for the life of me. The movie I was trying to think of was King Kong. As you know, this is not a Baz Luhrmann movie, but Australia reminded me of Jackson's King Kong a lot. Both filmmakers are clearly obsessed with CGI. But, see, the CGI in King Kong looked real to me. The CGI in Australia almost never looks real. There are long shots of landscapes and wide arial shots of the North Australia shore and the Northern Territories' night sky, but they always look computer-generated and they never look believable. It actually becomes quite distracting. It's as though the cartoony plot and cartoony acting bleeds into the landscape and that becomes cartoony, as well.
The other thing Australia has in common with Peter Jackson's brand of filmmaking is both directors' insistence on a Manichaean worldview. The good guys in Australia are so very good, and the villains are the most reprehensible, unforgiveable, horrible people you can imagine. Even when the director has the opportunity to introduce nuance he avoids it. He will not allow these characters to be complicated in any way. The bad guys are bad guys and the good guys are good guys who just need to learn a lesson or two.

There is more to say, of course. The film is racist in a lot of ways. It claims, for instance, to be a picture about inclusiveness and anti-prejudice, but Luhrmann's camera always turns its focus toward the white people in the story. Black people should be given equality in Australia, but not equality in the frame.

But there are worse things to say about Australia than its vaguely racist sensibilities.
Australia is boring.
And really long.
And you've seen it before.

Clint Eastwood 2008 Film #1

I finally scrounged up enough time to go see Clint Eastwood's Changeling last week. I figured it will be out of theaters soon and I would miss it if I didn't go soon.

I liked this picture. It is not going to be for everyone and it isn't a great movie by any means, but it is a very respectable picture; well shot, nicely staged. In discussion, I keep calling Changeling a "quality" film. It is a good script (by J. Michael Straczynski) and it is very well acted by a company of talented folks (helmed by the luminous Angelina Jolie, but including Michael Kelly, John Malkovich, and Jeffrey Donovan). A young man named Eddie Alderson gives a great performance—one of the best in the film—as a young murderer who is roped into killing Angelina Jolie's little boy (maybe).

Changeling is not without its problems. The lead character lacks a strong narrative arc and the plot occasionally follows various subplots that feel out of place and ill-motivated. Still, the subplots converge well enough, and each has an emotional payoff. The movie is never boring and it's filled with a bevy of intriguing villains and seedy elements as well as a noble heroine.

As far as Oscar, I think the film is not really going to catch hold. I love Angelina Jolie, but I don't think the Academy is really on the bandwagon. She was fantastic in last year's A Mighty Heart, had tons of early buzz, and still didn't get a nomination. And, as the title of this post hints, Eastwood has another movie coming out this season (Gran Torino) that is also getting very good reviews. Changeling, therefore, may only end up getting some below-the-line buzz (costumes, cinematography, art direction, screenplay) and may not even get those.

Still, this is quality filmmaking, and I found the film emotionally satisfying, well directed and intelligent.

Rachel Getting Married

Jonathan Demme's new movie Rachel Getting Married (his return to narrative features after four years) is a movie about, well, a wedding. But like so many weddings, this wedding is not all about the bride.

The movie starts with the bride's dour sister Kym (Anne Hathaway) getting out of rehab and getting picked up by her father and stepmother (theatre veterans Bill Irwin and Anna Deavere Smith). Kym is irritable and selfish from the first moment she is onscreen. The wedding is being held at the family home and the house is, of course, filled with preparations for the wedding: musicians, people arranging flowers, decorators. At the center of this wedding bustle is the bride, Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt, in a fabulous, award-worthy performance).

Kym descends on this wedding, which appears to be a stress-free occasion but for her presence. All are, of course, happy that Kym is able to come to the wedding, but her acid tongue and consistently selfish attitude create awkwardness throughout the weekend that the film documents.

Rachel Getting Married is a family drama written by Jenny Lumet, daughter of legendary filmmaker Sidney Lumet and the script is reminiscent of wedding/family dramas like The Celebration, After the Wedding and (more obviously, perhaps) last year's Margot at the Wedding. And the problem with Rachel Getting Married is that though it recalls all of these films it is not as good as any of them. Margot at the Wedding, in particular, is an extremely intelligent film with a fierce central performance. And, I guess what I'm saying is that Rachel Getting Married seems, more than anything else, like a Noah Baumbach tribute film that is not as good as a Noah Baumbach film.

Still, there are some lovely performances in the film. Rosemarie DeWitt (as I already mentioned) is tops as the "good" sister. Bill Irwin as the longsuffering father to these girls is really brilliant, particularly in a family confrontation in act two. Anna Deavere Smith is given very little to do, but it is nice to see her, at any rate. Oh yeah, and the girls' mother is played by Debra Winger (!) She is also very, very good, although I think her role might be a little too small for Academy consideration. Truth be told, I don't think this film has much chance of any recognition by the Academy except as a screenplay: the main character is just too abrasive. I spent the entire film wanting to lock her out of the house.

Seen Around Talla-classy #3

This one is a little late, but:

Now, what is this person thinking? I actually can't figure it out. Does this driver like Sarah Palin? The sticker is obviously sexist and demeaning toward Mrs. Palin, but what I think is weird is that I think the sticker might be in support of the McCain/Palin ticket. So strange.
Of course, I put this question forward to one of my (heterosexual male) students and he said—and I quote—"That person definitely supports Palin; MILF is never a derogatory term." I disagree, certainly, but I take his point. Weird.

The other sign I wish to share with you is from my ride home from work:

I have nothing to add. I can sort of make out "milk," "beer," and "bread," and it also looks like they were at some point selling 32 oz. sodas (what gas station doesn't?) but what in the hell is the rest of it?

Don't Ask If You Don't Want to Know

I have been playing a dangerous little game with my parents in regards to Proposition 8. See, I know my parents are homophobic people but I don't know that they're homophobic people. You know what I mean? I don't know because I don't ask about their homophobia and they don't tell me. And I've been attempting to avoid any and all knowledge about this homophobia because I want to like my parents.

Today, however, my little sister accidentally told me that my parents voted Yes on Proposition 8.

So...
the news of the day is that my parents are bigots.

I talked to my dad on Monday afternoon, too. We had a nice conversation and we laughed and joked. He told me he would call me on Wednesday to check in about the election and I promised him that I wouldn't gloat too much about Obama being elected. And my dad said that he was actually looking forward to it in a lot of ways. He said he wasn't going to be too disappointed about Obama's win. I thought it was magnanimous of him and was rather looking forward to our chat on Wednesday.

We missed each other on Wednesday. He called me while I was in class and I called back while he and my mom were out walking. I can't call him back today after hearing this. I am too angry but mostly too hurt. I did not want to know this about my parents. But this is hate. This is bigotry and hate and—no matter what they say—this time they have directed their hate at me.

And anyone who knows me knows that I do not want to get married, that I have no intention of ever getting married. I told my last boyfriend that if I were to ever get married for insurance purposes or tax purposes I would want to keep it a secret: no wedding, no "Mr. & Mr.," no "my husband is at the grocery store." I am a good libertarian: I don't like marriage as an institution and I don't think the government should sanction it. But, as it happens, the government does sanction it. And at least 18,000 lesbian and gay people in California want to be married to their partners. They want this for many reasons and these people should be able to do what they want to do.

My parents evidently feel as though these people (me included) should not be allowed to do what my parents themselves are able to do. My parents believe that I am not as valuable as they are. That I do not deserve to be able to exercise the rights that they have exercised. They believe that they are somehow better than me.

This, to me, is unacceptable. A vote in favor of Proposition 8 is hateful and bigoted, and both of my parents cast that vote.

I have no idea what I am going to do about this and I wish this had not happened.
I could've lived with the don't-ask-don't-tell policy for at least a little while longer, but I don't know if I can live with this.

It is unacceptable. There is no excuse.

Funk Over

I think my bad mood is officially over. I am feeling much better for some reason. Perhaps it is the death rattle of the Bush presidency that is putting a spring in my step.

My computer crashed on Tuesday, by the way, and I have not yet recovered all of the data from the main drive. So that's a bummer. But everyone assures me that the data are recoverable; it will just take time. I am (strangely) doing okay.

I still hate this semester of graduate school and cannot wait for it to end, but the end—as they say—is in sight and I am excited to visit California.

So: a few movies. I have continued my trend of frivolity. This means that I, of course, caught Kenny Ortega's High School Musical 3: Senior Year. Frankly, I liked it better than the first two. I thought there were some nice, sentimental moments. Little Efron is becoming a much better actor than he was when he started in the business, and the plot is not heinous. This one, too, feels more like a musical than the first two. There is a dancing-on-the-rooftop number that is true movie magic. The songs in HSM3 are, like the songs in films one and two, largely unmemorable, but I didn't mind at all. The film has enough life and excitement to be worth enjoying. I am positive the film would be better served with alcohol, but I liked it quite enough without a martini in my hand.

I liked Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, too. The film, by the way, has nothing to do with The Thin Man This is a sweet romantic comedy about teenagers who love music. It's very fun. The dialogue is clever, but not overly clever, and the lead couple is engaging. Ari Graynor, who plays the sidekick of the main girl, is a drunk hot mess for most of the film, and she gives a truly hilarious performance that is nuanced and realistic. Michael Cera is adorable as usual, but the entire film is filled with memorable, silly characters, including Cera's bandmates in the film, who are both gay and spend the evening trying to think up a better name for their band The Jerkoffs. Anyway, this is charming and totally worth seeing.

A Couple of Movies

I have been having a terrible week in grad school, mostly all to do with how much improvement I need as a teacher, so instead of focusing on work when I get home, I have been spending time watching movies. Admittedly, this is probably not the best decision that I could have made, but that's what I've been doing.

First, I finally got to see Guillaume Canet's French thriller Ne le Dis à Personne (Tell No One) starring François Cluzet and Marina Hands among others. The film is a very American-style movie (at least to my mind), but it is an exciting murder mystery and I found it always interesting and often very, very cool. I should also point out, that the movie kept me guessing until the end and there was at least one point in the film when I looked at my friend and said "I have no idea who those people are or what they are doing": usually a good sign when a movie is filled with creepy villains. The film also stars Marie Josée-Croze, Nathalie Baye (fabulous) and Gilles Lelouche. But my favorite performance in the movie is from Kristen Scott-Thomas (love her) who plays the very cool lesbian best friend of the male lead. She is wonderful as usual, and her glances say a million things at once, sometimes even negating what she happens to be saying, She is amazing and I can't wait to see her in her next 2008 movie, Il y a Longtemps que Je T'aime, for which there is already talk of an Oscar nomination.

It is probably best that we say very little about the fact that I saw Dennis Dugan's You Don't Mess with the Zohan. Even less should be said about the fact that I actually thought it was mildly funny and interestingly antihomophobic.

And I found Adam Sandler kinda sexy. Even with that ludicrous haircut. OK I will stop. It's too much.

The other movie I saw recently was another movie I should probably be ashamed of: the low-budget gay comedy The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green. It looks like it was shot over a period of two weeks, the plot is ridiculous and predictable, the acting is less than brilliant, but...

the lead boy is very cute and, well it's really a rather lovely little comedy; my roommate and I loved it. We laughed out loud several times, and Meredith Baxter plays a great supporting character. If you are not gay, you should definitely skip Ethan Green, but if you are, you should probably rent it, because I can bet that you will like it.

Paranoid Park

I like Gus Van Sant. I was probably one of the only people in the world who really liked Gerry, his two-handed film with Matt Damon and Casey Affleck in 2003. And I loved his film Elephant, which a meditative and fascinating riff on the Columbine High School killings.

Van Sant has been working in the same style as those films for a while now (on and off, of course), but I liked his Kurt Cobain movie Last Days considerably less than those earlier two movies.

This year's Paranoid Park is another meditative, quiet film, this time about a murder and a skateboarding teenager. It's a character study, but...

well I didn't really like it all that much. I mean, I guess I liked it. I love the style. I am glad Van Sant is still working like this. I particularly love the photography and I dig his unconventional use of music, too. But this movie doesn't really have much to go on in terms of content. The plot just isn't that interesting. Paranoid Park is also hampered by uneven acting. By which I mean that some of the supporting players, simply put, are bad. There is a young lady named Lauren McKinney, in particular (Paranoid Park is her first movie) who is terrible. Whenever she is onscreen she pulled me out of the narrative and away from my emotional involvement with the fascinating lead actor (Gabe Nevins, also in his first movie).

The use of non-actors in films occasionally pays off, but I find sometimes that these performers are too conscious of their own performances to be believable onscreen. Quite a few of the actors in Paranoid Park (McKinney is not the only one) did this to me, and so I just couldn't quite buy into this film the way I fell for Elephant and Gerry. Van Sant is still doing good work, but I wish he would use a more experienced talent-pool.

Things We Lost in the Fire

I took some time out to watch a movie this afternoon. I am so behind on my 2008 movies! So I watched one of the Netflix DVDs that have been sitting on my TV table for the last three months:

Last year's Things We Lost in the Fire is the first English-language film by Danish director Susanne Bier. (If you look at my list for 2007, you will see her other 2007 feature After the Wedding hanging out at #11. Briefly, I found After the Wedding to be a powerfully moving meditation on death, doing the right thing and parental responsibility. Quite frankly, I loved it, and I feel that it fully deserved its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language film.)

Things We Lost in the Fire retains all of what I love about Bier. The film stars Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro as the wife and best friend of a man who has recently died. It's a very intelligent film about themes similar to After the Wedding. Fire centers around fascinating, quirky characters dealing with deep grief and attempting to cope with one another in addition to their loss.

The film is superbly acted, and Bier has a way with Realistic storytelling that gives us just enough to keep us riveted to the story without having to wallow in self-pity or sentimentality. The most moving scene in the film is actually one of the film's happiest. The family go around the table remembering things and quizzing one another on what they remember about their absent father/husband/friend. It's an incredible scene: totally simple and at the same time devastating.

I think what I like most about Bier's movies, though, is their intelligence. In its meditations on addiction and parenthood, Fire is a very smart film. Bier never takes the easy way out with her narratives. These lives have been disrupted by an act of violence and her film knows that things don't just go back to normal ever. But what Things We Lost in the Fire does give us—and what After the Wedding gives us, too—is the hope that human connection can help us cope with life's many tragedies. Things aren't going to be perfect, but they can be better.

New Conference News

I sent in an abstract for a panel at the American Society for Eighteenth-century Studies annual conference and I heard back from them a couple weeks ago:

Hello Laura, Liz, and Aaron,

I am impressed with your proposals for my ASECS panel, "Too Exquisite for Laughter," and would like to include your papers in the session. The papers appear to fit rather neatly together, which is quite the bonus.

Aaron C. Thomas, Florida State University, "'Perish the Baubles': the Conspicuous Unimportance of Wealth in Sentimental Comedy"
Liz Harbaugh, Florida State University, "(Re)historicizing Richard Cumberland's The West Indian"
Laura J. Rosenthal, University of Maryland, College Park, "The Sentimental Gesture in The West Indian"

I'm looking forward to a provocative discussion. If your plans (or working titles) have changed since submitting your proposals, please let me know as soon as possible.

So it appears that I will presenting at a conference this Spring. Here is the conference website.

And here is the abstract I submitted:

Though the traditional theatre history narrative commits to a linear development of the sentimental comedy from Cibber to Steele on through to Cumberland, more recent scholarship has aimed at the destruction of a strict division of genres for eighteenth century comedy. Many scholars (Robert Hume and others) have explicitly attacked the notion that Goldsmith and R.B. Sheridan formed a united front against the sentimental comedy, returning laughter to comedy and recalling its glory days.

But even if we are free to explode the notion of the sentimental comedy as a genre that is useful to us now, it is important to explore what all the fuss was about simply because the eighteenth century Britons thought it such an important topic. To Steele, Dennis, Sheridan, Goldsmith, and Garrick, debates and discussions about sentimentalism were real, serious, and had material consequences.

My paper explores the material consequences of the debates about comedy by looking at eighteenth century characters’ sentimental ideas about money. In particular, I plan to investigate how wealth in sentimental comedies—from Steele to Sheridan—is both disavowed by the characters and central to the characters’ successes.

My title is taken from Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, where the fashionable Hastings professes his love for Miss Neville whether or not she comes to him with her dowry of jewels. Hastings does not (he says) need money to be happy; he needs only his beloved. But the secondary plot of the play hinges completely on whether or not Hastings and Miss Neville will be wealthy in addition to being happily in love. The characters in these comedies say that money is unimportant to their happiness, while the entirety of the play’s action is consumed with the question of whether or not the main (male) characters will get both the girl and the money. It is this denial that I find most fascinating about British comedy during the eighteenth century.

Moving beyond attempts at a generic taxonomy for eighteenth century comedies, this paper sees the sentimental as a shift in the bourgeois moral ideology of the dramatists and audiences of the eighteenth century rather than a shift in genre. This shift is evident most tellingly in the comedies’ (sentimental) attitudes about money. From Farquhar and Steele to Cumberland and Sheridan, the playwrights romanticize the impoverished and censure the affluent, while simultaneously the plays reject poverty and celebrate wealth.

Wow, upon re-reading it, that sounds really smart. I hope I am smart enough to write it.

Seen Around Talla-classy #2

I am continuing this series of amusing signs that I have photographed around Talla-classy.

Summers Realty, evidently, has figured out something that hardly any of us can figure out:

Evidently, if you buy your home through Summers Realty, you won't have any fights at home.

Next, we have Carlos' Cuban Café, where they have a fascinating new beverage item on their menu:

I imagine mojitos con camarones and mojitos con jamón and mojitos con albóndigas. Gross.

This next photo is an honest advertisement that doesn't really have anything wrong with it, but:

I mean, aren't all Vera Bradley patterns retired? I feel like anyone who carries a Vera Bradley purse is already attempting to look like they collect social security.

...And I meant to get a photo of the bumper sticker I saw last week that said "Chicks 4 Palin: God, Family Values, Guns, & Lipstick" but I was camera-less on that occasion.

Hamlet Dos

I haven't posted about Andrew Fleming's Hamlet 2 because I kinda didn't like it. It is supposed to be a kind of Waiting for Guffman-style parody of high school theatre, I guess, but it never really succeeds.

The movie stars Steve Coogan as a kind of closeted (we all assume) drama teacher who can't seem to get his wife pregnant and appears to have no talents of any kind. Suddenly a whole bunch of kids join his drama class, which has had only two students for many years, and he decides to write an original show for them to perform.

The show is not original at all, it turns out. It is a sequel to William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

The real problem of the movie is that the idea of this fantastic show hangs over the entire film. And Hamlet 2 the play totally delivers. Those are a sublime twenty minutes or so. But, unfortunately, nothing before it is really funny at all, and Coogan overplays his hand. His character is a total fucking nutcase and a complete depressive and he's a little hard to like.

It seems odd to say that I liked the play better than I liked the movie, but, quite seriously, those final twenty minutes where the cast actually performs Hamlet 2, to pop songs sung by the Tucson (or is it Sedona?) Gay Men's Chorus, are brilliant. There is this whole musical number called "Rock Me Sexy Jesus" which is totally inspired. There is a time machine and all kinds of other nonsense, too. It's really quite a great sequence. If only the rest of the film were up to the play.

The New Coen Brothers' Movie

I really liked Burn after Reading. It's classic Coen Brothers' humor and more than worth the watch. I may even see it again. Joe Morgenstern called the movie a "cheerful trifle" and "forget after seeing," and I understand how people can thing that Burn is rather inconsequential when compared to the Coens' most recent powerhouse of a feature No Country for Old Men, but there is a lot to be said for funny, and Burn is hilarious.

In Coen fashion, it's absolutely ludicrous. The characters are figures of deep ridicule, making inane (and hilarious) decisions, and the whole film is a riff on the real spy movies of the 1960s and 1970s and all of those pseudo-spy movies of the 1990s (and even more recently—I should mention—the unbearable Charlie Wilson's War). Burn never takes itself seriously even when it is pretending to do so. The thing is, it pretends really well, and it is the very pretense which is so funny. We know we aren't supposed to be taking this seriously from the get-go, and so every ridiculous nuanced character trait that these characters have becomes hilarious. I thought it was great.

Oh yeah, the film stars George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich (who is brilliant), Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins and JK Simmons. The best part, though, is Brad Pitt. He is absurd, and his acting is flawless. I am laughing just thinking about his moronic behavior in this movie.

Wanted

The Angelina Jolie vehicle Wanted, which stars James McAvoy as well as Morgan Freeman (who, I'm increasingly inclined to believe, does not turn down any role he is offered) is a derivative, inane, piece of junk of a movie.

When I say that Wanted is derivative, I mean, specifically, that Michael Brandt & Derek Haas's script is a complete and total rip-off of the Wachowski Brothers' 1999 feature The Matrix. Nearly all of Wanted's plot points faintly echo the exploits of Neo and Morpheus and Trinity. And it should not surprise you at all that Wanted totally pales in comparison to the film it copies. Its accusatory politics, its moral high ground, and its smug message of carpe diem all seem lifted from 1999. If any of this were interesting I'd tell you, but none of it is. Wanted is totally absurd and laughably bad. And Angelina Jolie is not even in it enough for it to be a vehicle worthy of her abilities.

New Allen; Same as the Old Allen?

Many have remarked that Interiors—one of my favorite Woody Allen movies—is Allen's Bergman movie. So totally is Interiors a tribute, a loving homage, to Bergman, that it is impossible not to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Allen's newest feature, as a tribute to a man who is clearly one of Allen's new favorite filmmakers.

For Vicky Cristina Barcelona is obviously a loving homage to that master of camp, that brilliant genius of storytelling: Pedro Almodóvar. Allen has adopted a kind of feeling of Almodóvar for his newest film, and the moments when this Almodóvage shine through Allen's script are the film's best.

I liked Vicky Cristina Barcelona quite a bit, but I also feel the same way about it that I felt about Allen's other 2008 feature. The problem, see, is that Allen still has really great stories to tell, he just isn't so great at telling the stories anymore. As such, Vicky Cristina Barcelona knows a lot about human nature, love, relationships, desperation, and passion. In this way it is a smart, even wise, film from an aging, brilliant director. But most of Allen's formal devices don't work well at all. The entirety of the film, for instance, is framed by a narrator telling the film's audience all about the characters and their weaknesses and foibles. The benefits of this are manifold: the exposition is easily, cleverly delivered, and is immediately dispensed with; conflicts are created without dialogue; glances and gestures become immediately much more meaningful. But the narration sacrifices something incredibly important. We know the characters extremely well from the beginning of the film due to the narrator's voice, but he (it's a man's voice) also creates a distance between us and the characters. So we become better than them, smarter than them. We know their weaknesses and so we don't need to discover them. This gives the whole film a cynical, rather glib air, and our affection for the characters suffers for it.

One more thing needs to be said about Vicky Cristina Barcelona, though, and that is that I must tell you that Penélope Cruz is a revelation. I can't remember her sexier or funnier or more fabulous, even in an Almodóvar film. I think that may be because Almodóvar's films usually have several fabulous, sexy, funny women in them, and Allen's movie has only Miss Cruz. As it is, Allen has written Penélope Cruz one of her best roles ever, and easily her best English-speaking role. Cruz is a firestorm: a wicked, fantastic, cruel creature who destroys everything she touches but is incredibly vulnerable and sad. It's a great performance in a film that, the more she is on-screen, seems to exist only to showcase her. Cruz takes over this movie. She is the only thing anyone will be talking about when they leave this movie. It's a tour-de-force, not to be missed, and I hope she gets nominated for an Oscar. She's that great.