Michael wrote:Not yet.
This is what's holding me back. Ed Gonzalez is one of the very few critics I read and agree with almost completely.
Pan-Seared Misogyny in Hot-Blooded Balsamic Mediterranean Reduction
Hah!
However, I have seen it and I will delicately note why I disagree with this review.
VCB wasn't in my opinion the most insightful film of the past decade, and true- other people have tread the same material more successfully, but that doesn't all-together invalidate
VCB.
Gonzalez says that Woody "paints every man in the film as a pillar of conviction" and this is just plain
wrong. Juan Antonio is painted as smarmy; he stole his painting style from his ex-wife, and he is just as lost and self-absorbed as the females. And as for the misogyny charges, this is
not a sweeping generalization (ahem) but there's a reason that the stereotypes these women embody exist-there are quite a few females who go through the same convoluted contrivances that the main characters do-in much less pretty surroundings. And Allen has every right to take a tongue-in-cheek approach to studying them (which is what the brilliant narration is for- a distancing, almost clinical observation).
"Then there's the ménage à trios between Cristina, Juan and Maria Elena, whose formation could have been an occasion for Allen to offer genuine insight into the paradoxes of sexual commitment, linking emotional effect to artistic collaboration, but Allen is as flippant and vulgar about gay desire as Kate Perry is. (Cristina's insincere longing for Maria Elena is just a phase, and she flaunts it as she would a new dress.)" he says. Well, that's the point. Allen is not being flippant; this is a portrait of a vapid, capricious girl who flaunts every new phase she takes up. She is just as involved with her art as she is with smooching Maria- not profoundly so
at all. And linking emotional effect to artistic collaboration would be interesting, yes, but that's not the purpose of this movie.
And Rebecca Hall brings true humanism to the story. Here is a girl that has a true passion for something-Catalan culture-and suddenly is thrust into the realization that there are other passions to be had in life (in love). In that situation, you
are lost, unaware of what to do and unsure of yourself. I don't think that she was in love with Juan, really- I think she was in love with the
idea of a life shared with someone who had
drives in life, who had depth and passions of their own. Yet she is too weak, too scared to pursue this
idea. And that is the real human tragedy to be had in the movie, and thats why Rebecca deserves an oscar: she portrays all of this beautifully, heartbreakingly so.
I hope this all makes some kind of sense.
) but I think his review of VCB is hilarious.
(Come on, how can a guy wearing sunglasses be pretentious?)