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Rating: Two American friends, one who looks like a piece of wood with a broom handle embedded, the other vaguely slutty (or at least open to all experiences), the muse Scarlett, arrive in Barcelona at the beginning of summer. The wasp wooden piece needs to study for a master's on Catalan identity, the other accompanies her to see what happens. They arrive at the aunt's place of the wooden piece, who lives with her fat husband in a princely house, they go around and meet the damned artist Bardém, who tells them straight if they want to accompany him to Oviedo to see a beautiful statue (a Christ in a church seen for 3 seconds that to someone who doesn't know, honestly says nothing) and to have some great sex! The piece of wood gets indignant (by the way, she's engaged to some sort of New York jerk), the other gets turned on. So they go, and when Scarlett is already there nice and ready, she gets a stomach ache (!?) and doesn’t go through with it. So Bardém ends up sleeping with the other. These are the first 15 minutes. Of the rest, I will only say that at some point Penelope arrives (our artist's ex-wife) (damned who drives a vintage Alfa Romeo, has a pig father with a princely house and a modern villa that looks like a museum) who attempted suicide and has gone crazy engaging in a menage à trois with Bardem and Scarlett who by comparison to Penelope becomes a piece of wood.
Enough plot. The only beautiful thing about the film is Cruz in a slip, especially when she speaks in Spanish, sensual and wicked just right. The rest is a ridiculous farce that neither makes you laugh nor cry, without a single line worth it. The only underlying thesis: Americans are pieces of wood gone crazy for prudusiun (a bit like Brescians) unable to live life to the fullest but strictly respectful of preset patterns, while in old Europe, in the 'vaguely' fashionable Barcelona you can have a great time (but with the money to do it, of course) among glasses of wine, classical guitar concerts, and free sex. For God's sake, it might even be okay, but the film isn't there, it didn't succeed, doesn't take off, has no ideas or real twists.
To dear Woody, author of memorable pages and who even recently had flashes of class (for me Match Point is a great film), let's say it's not obligatory to make a film every year. There was interest to see his first film (so I've read, but I'm not sure) with Mediterranean and sunny settings, but it seemed to me that this effectively added nothing and that the director himself felt uneasy portraying a reality that he does not know and that is not part of his DNA.
At certain moments it seems like an Almodovar rinsed in the Hudson, or an Allen drowned in the Llobregat.
Saludos.
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