The movie simpers along until she deigns to appear: drunk, battered, surreally sexy. Penélope Cruz's María Elena obliterates everyone and everything on screen, and she does it with the natural superiority of a true comedienne. In her performance, English is the comedy and Spanish the drama. The linguistic enmity is a thing of explosive beauty: she is at odds with herself and the world. (Her savagery of English gives her added nobility). Woody Allen writes and directs her as some kind of mythical Mediterranean goddess - a wild thing of the Barcelona forests - living on the edge of the civilized world. But Cruz gives her relevancy. In the movie's best scene, she tears apart her prey - the meek American tourist played by Scarlett Johansson - limb by limb while nonchalantly spouting impossibly racist remarks and predicting the weather by sheer force of instinct. Her vitality is a double-edged sword: it renders the rest of this passable dramedy irrelevant. She seems to be Woody Allen's ideal of the Artist-Muse, but Cruz turns this joke of a character and her own excruciating English into works of art. This bilingual contradiction is a creature of our times.
Showing posts with label rebecca hall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rebecca hall. Show all posts
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008, Allen)
The movie simpers along until she deigns to appear: drunk, battered, surreally sexy. Penélope Cruz's María Elena obliterates everyone and everything on screen, and she does it with the natural superiority of a true comedienne. In her performance, English is the comedy and Spanish the drama. The linguistic enmity is a thing of explosive beauty: she is at odds with herself and the world. (Her savagery of English gives her added nobility). Woody Allen writes and directs her as some kind of mythical Mediterranean goddess - a wild thing of the Barcelona forests - living on the edge of the civilized world. But Cruz gives her relevancy. In the movie's best scene, she tears apart her prey - the meek American tourist played by Scarlett Johansson - limb by limb while nonchalantly spouting impossibly racist remarks and predicting the weather by sheer force of instinct. Her vitality is a double-edged sword: it renders the rest of this passable dramedy irrelevant. She seems to be Woody Allen's ideal of the Artist-Muse, but Cruz turns this joke of a character and her own excruciating English into works of art. This bilingual contradiction is a creature of our times.
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