"Maybe if I drink enough wine, this movie will go away."

Yesterday I went to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona. I know what you're thinking. Why the hell would you do that?

Because it's been forced on me. As a North American living in Barcelona, I'm suddenly being asked to answer for this damn film everywhere I go.

For example, I was interviewed for Asuntos Propios, a program on Radio Nacional Española. In the middle of the interview, the host Toni Garrido said: "Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Is that movie about you?"

I laughed and said, "Jesus, I hope not."

Anyway, I did my duty and saw the movie. And I left the theater asking myself the same question that every human being asks himself after witnessing a senseless atrocity that just shouldn't happen in a civilized world:

"Why, Lord? Why??? How could you let such a thing happen?" Followed immediately by a second thought: God, I hope no one sees me here.

And then I pulled my hat down over my eyes and I ran. While running, I remembered Toni Garrido's question -- "Is that movie about you?" -- and resolved that the next person who asks me that, I will have to kick in the nuts.

It was the worst film I've seen in years. Let's start with the script, which I am convinced was written somebody other than Woody Allen. But who? Soon-Yi? Mia Farrow? Someone who probably hated Woody Allen and wished to destroy his reputation, that's for sure. All I can do is speculate.

Perhaps Woody Allen engaged in indecent behavior with a small Asian child while visiting Barcelona. Perhaps the act was witnessed by some funcionario working in the tourist offices of Barcelona, who then said: "Look, Jew. You will make a movie about Barcelona and its beautiful tourist attractions such as Parc Guell, La Pedrera, and the underage Romanian whores of Ronda San Antoni, or I will report you to the authorities. Oh, and by the way, I'll write the script. I'm taking a workshop!"

With an irritating narrator explaining everything that the movie already shows, this movie is like a parody of a bad student film. For example, during a shot of Scarlett Johannsen tossing and turning in bed at night, the narrator drones: "Cristina tossed and turned that night. She found it difficult to sleep."

Thanks for letting us know. We wouldn't have been able to tell she was tossing and turning and unable to sleep from merely watching her tossing and turning and unable to sleep.

It would have been fun if the narrator had extended his statements to observations of the audience. "The audience members are restlessly fidgeting in their chairs, torn between getting up and walking out and enduring the film to see if it gets any better. Between the embarrassing clichés and my stodgy narration, they're having a hard time holding down the meal they ate shortly before coming in here."

"Wow, this place is so cool! Can you imagine living here?"
"Uh, I think it might be written into the script that we do live here."

In the movie's favor, I did learn things about Spanish culture that I had no clue about after four years of living here. For example, I learned that if you live in Spain, life is lived in art galleries, museums, expensive restaurants and smoky bars filled with "artists". When people don't go out, they live in million-dollar historical landmarks. When they meet up with each other, they don't meet in convenient places, like the head of Las Ramblas or the Colón statue. Instead, they meet in places like on Tillers Street in Pedralbes. "Who the fuck ever meets on Tillers Street in Pedralbes? It's completely out of the way!" "Nobody, but it's one of the tourist landmarks that Woody needs to get into the movie or they'll hand him over to the Guardia Civil."

In this movie, Spanish people are all either painters, writers or composers, who enjoy hedonistic lifestyles and have no need to earn a living. It's great! Although it did leave me feeling like a schmuck, 'cause I just live in a regular apartment and know regular people who work at normal jobs to survive. Obviously I've been hanging out with a bunch of losers.

Wait, there aren't just artists in Spain. I forgot about the whores. No American fantasy of romantic old Europe is complete without a sprinkling of plucky, bawdy, life-affirming whores! In this case, we get to see the whores of the Raval neighborhood of Barcelona. These whores are happy-go-lucky souls, smiling and laughing, anxious to pose for the snapshots of well-to-do American tourists for absolutely nothing in return.

Though one of the main characters is in Barcelona to work on her Master's degree in Catalan identity, at no point in the film does anyone seem to be aware that there is a Catalan language. I'll bet TV3 and the Barcelona local government, both which helped finance the film, loved that.

I did learn something about "Spanish" chicks... at least the kind played by Penelope Cruz. They are chain-smoking witches with tons of crazy black unwashed hair flying all over the place. In fact, I think that Penelope's crazy hair should have been given a separate actor's credit, for all the hard work it did flying around her head during her scenes. These crazy Spanish chicks always end up screaming at whoever they're talking to, no matter how normal the conversation. Sometimes while they're smoking and screaming, they splash out Jackson Pollock-type paintings while dressed in a ripped leotard, kind of like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance. Or like Isabelle Huppert in Camille Claudelle. Or Beatrice Dalle in Betty Blue... nevermind.

It seems Woody Allen thinks that a hairy, chain-smoking Spanish chick who screams at everybody who inexplicably lets her stay for free in their million-dollar mansion is passionate and exotic. I think the Spanish, however, have their own words for it: hortera, or coñazo.

As for American chicks, there are two kinds in this movie: the uptight brunette with the stick up her ass who doesn't know how to live (but who secretly longs for the sleazy Latin lover to teach her how -- insert porno soundtrack here), and the ditzy blonde. It's a relief to see that neither one fell into some cheap stereotype.

The first type, the brunette, is played by ... um.... oh, who cares? Sure she was good, but really, when you've got Scarlett's big ripe ass bouncing through this picture, you tend not to care who the other one was. They didn't even give the other actress billing in the movie posters, so don't call me the asshole for pointing it out.

Scarlett Johanssen plays the dreamy airhead who tells Javier Bardem, a total stranger, that she would love to take him up on his offer to board a tiny plane, which he will pilot, to Oviedo, where she will accompany him on museum tours as well as engage in three-way sex with him and her friend the brunette. Boy, does that bring back memories of my own travels!

I can imagine Woody saying to Scarlett throughout the making of this movie, "Remember Juliette Lewis? Just act the same way she did in all her movies. Maybe suck your thumb a little bit more." Scarlett's acting responsibilities consist of flouncing about the tony mansions and rustic hideaways while looking, uh, dreamy, and gulping Cabernet out of huge wineglasses while getting progressively more glassy-eyed as a date rape waiting to happen. As a matter of fact, the two female leads spend a lot of time gulping wine from huge glasses. Maybe as a way to dull the pain of being in this movie. Believe me, ten minutes into this thing, I was hurting for a bottle of absinthe.

The most disappointing part of the film was in the final, for lack of a better word, "climactic" scene, [SPOILER HERE!] when crazy coñazo Penelope Cruz surprises Javier Bardem and the brunette sharing a romantic moment, and responds by wildly shooting at them with a pistol. Being a crazy Spanish chick, she has no idea how to fire a pistol and is utterly incapable of hitting either of her targets from a distance of two meters. In her defense, though, I'm sure her hair obstructed her vision. Bullets go flying everywhere, but my big complaint is that none of them found its way into Woody Allen.

Not to seriously wound him, of course. Just to wake him up out of his viejo chocho stupor so he'd drop the camera and say, "Shit! What the hell am I doing? This movie is an abortion. I'm going home."

And then the blackmailing Catalan bureaucrat who put him up to all of this would say, "Mr. Allen, you're forgetting something. Something about a small Asian child, and your obligations to finishing this film. My film. After all, I did take a workshop."

And then Woody Allen would say, "Oh yeah. The small Asian child. Tell you what: I'll marry her, same as I did Soon-Yi. Problem solved."

Then Woody Allen would start to walk off the set, but turn around one last time. "Now excuse me, and fuck you. I'm going back to New York, where I will make some real movies."

I can dream, can't I?

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