Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

      After watching Scoop, the actor-director combination of Scarlett Johansson(SJ) and Woody Allen(WA) intrigued me quite a bit. I went on to add 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona' and 'Match Point' to the top of my Netflix queue. This movie is an entertaining slaughter of the objective ideals by the subjective ideals. It reminded me of other movies such as 'The Dreamers' and 'Stealing Beauty'(Bernardo Bertolucci) where American tourists end up in cerebrally subjugating roles. Somehow I find this subjugation exceedingly hilarious.
      The movie follows two girls (Vicky and Cristina(SJ)), Vicky knows exactly what she wants and Cristina knows exactly what she does not want. I had to use the word 'exactly' because the girls think they know what they want or do not want 'exactly'. And they visit Barcelona to spend their summer and pursue career. They meet this charismatic artist Juan Antonio (played by Javier Bardem of 'No Country For Old Men' fame) at an art exhibition and the rest of it is mutual exploits to put it short.
      What I am interested in however is the way WA depicts the collapse of deductive ideals of the girls when subjected to the charm of non-conformist ideals of the artist. The course of Cristina reminded me of this quote by Chuck Palahniuk 'If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't.'
      However the real adrenalin in the movie starts when Maria Elena, ex-wife of artist (played by penelope) whom Juan Antonio literally worships enters the scene. The intellectual contrast between the real non-conformist Maria Elena and the fake non-conformist Cristina was apparent.
The relation between Maria Elena and Juan Antonio is brilliantly written by WA. I would watch this movie again to see their chaos, if not for anything else. Would have loved the climax if Vicky left Doug(Vicky's factory made zombie husband) to eventually become the missing-missing ingredient of the relationship between Juan and Maria. That would have given a tint of Nietzsche to the story.