Here's a sample of some dialog from Barcelona:
"Oh, shootings, sure, but thay doesn't mean that America's more violent than other people. We're just better shots."
Leave it to Whit Stillman to have the kind of dialog that could read very different in another context, but in world of these two intelligent but at other times not exactly wise cousins (one a salesman the other a Navy man), it's funny and you even like these guys even when they say something that shows Americans are... ever always so reliably American.
There's always something amusing in seeing men who are so very certain about a worldview, especially if the other knows they're full of it, and Fred especially is one of those people in modern movies. There's also Ted, who makes sure to correct Marta (or try to rationalize) how there is no AFL-CIA, but the way he explains it has this wit about it that is open and clear, like we know how silly it even is to have these nominal distinctions and that institutions should get mocked in such light but direct ways, and Nichols is superb at playing firm but easy to get rattled if hearing a disagreeable thing (America does gasp terrible things no way) and Sorvino can more than hold her own, she's given her own deep insights to play.
Come to think of it, Barcelona is a rich slice of a satire pizza where you can taste the layers but they all mesh well together: white male American superiority is easy to criticize, but what makes the text richer is when sides are being argued for with mixed metaphors (oh those red ants), or how these men are trying to reckon with themselves as relationships get more complicated (oh Ramon), and that this humanizes them. Moreover, it's about how we rationalize the place we're at in our lives, how we may or may not be cut out for something. And it also comes down to manners and customs, what is and what is just not done, whether it's dancing to Glenn Miller by oneself or driving a bottle of Old Crow or talking about a system of government.
In short, this is more amusing than very funny - though I definitely laughed a number of times, and they were big ones ("American Imperialism, what's up with that?") - but it's well done amusement, and eventually there's real drama and stakes that shakes things up in a tragic sense; these are believable characters who know how to talk about how they view the world, but they can't control how the basic things in life go for them.
Watch out for Maneuveur X!
"Oh, shootings, sure, but thay doesn't mean that America's more violent than other people. We're just better shots."
Leave it to Whit Stillman to have the kind of dialog that could read very different in another context, but in world of these two intelligent but at other times not exactly wise cousins (one a salesman the other a Navy man), it's funny and you even like these guys even when they say something that shows Americans are... ever always so reliably American.
There's always something amusing in seeing men who are so very certain about a worldview, especially if the other knows they're full of it, and Fred especially is one of those people in modern movies. There's also Ted, who makes sure to correct Marta (or try to rationalize) how there is no AFL-CIA, but the way he explains it has this wit about it that is open and clear, like we know how silly it even is to have these nominal distinctions and that institutions should get mocked in such light but direct ways, and Nichols is superb at playing firm but easy to get rattled if hearing a disagreeable thing (America does gasp terrible things no way) and Sorvino can more than hold her own, she's given her own deep insights to play.
Come to think of it, Barcelona is a rich slice of a satire pizza where you can taste the layers but they all mesh well together: white male American superiority is easy to criticize, but what makes the text richer is when sides are being argued for with mixed metaphors (oh those red ants), or how these men are trying to reckon with themselves as relationships get more complicated (oh Ramon), and that this humanizes them. Moreover, it's about how we rationalize the place we're at in our lives, how we may or may not be cut out for something. And it also comes down to manners and customs, what is and what is just not done, whether it's dancing to Glenn Miller by oneself or driving a bottle of Old Crow or talking about a system of government.
In short, this is more amusing than very funny - though I definitely laughed a number of times, and they were big ones ("American Imperialism, what's up with that?") - but it's well done amusement, and eventually there's real drama and stakes that shakes things up in a tragic sense; these are believable characters who know how to talk about how they view the world, but they can't control how the basic things in life go for them.
Watch out for Maneuveur X!