VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA....8.5/10

by Aaron Mannino of Blue Key Reviews

"Everything I do affirms life" -Juan Antonio (Bardem)

When I think on Vicky Christina Barcelona I do not wallow in the mire of a pointless existence, even though there are underpinnings of this attitude in the finale of the film, which brings each character, principle and peripheral, in spite of their actions, right back to where they started, stifling their actualization, slave to their old moralities, emotional trends, and life decisions. It's a powerful note to end on, the futility of our efforts as emotional irrational individuals, but again, I don't remain on it too long. This feeling, intentionally or not, isn't made to resonate as deeply and lastingly as the films overarching elements of sensuality, complex love, the challenging of our moralized concepts of love (ie commitment, marriage, exclusivity, orientation, etc), and the vulnerability we experience in love being so close to the kind we experience in travel. However ironic, I felt affirmed of life after watching this film. And even though I sometimes have little sympathy for the woes of the wealthy, especially those that can summer in Spain without batting an eye, I'm continuously interested in Allen's dissection of the subject, and his career spanning reveal of the cross-class inevitability of emotional starvation.

Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), the empassioned, intrepid, and quite forward Spanish painter who boldly propositions single Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and engaged Christina (Scarlett Johansson), two friends on summer holiday in Spain, to join him for a weekend in his hometown, speaks of love and life as transient, and so this translates into the unfolding of the film itself. Things never feel constant. But no matter the brevity of experiences, they are still had, emotions are felt, and we are changed in accumulation, no matter how concealed we are about it. Vicky Christina Barcelona doesn't follow a straight narrative path. Rather it deviates and accumulates, allowing things to fall in and out of sync with one another.

Read my full review at http://bluekeyreviews.blogspot.com/ where I discuss the character complexity of Allen's newest film, and how VICKY... fits into his new and old cinematic stride.

[Aaron Mannino is an installation/video artist with a BFA from Tyler School of Art, who among many disciplines, is a fervent explorer of the cinematic medium through watching and writing.]

New Blood Draws on Old Themes; 'Taiwan New Cinema' Seeks an Identity of Fearlessness

A Review of Help Me Eros (2008)
As screened at the 2008 Philadelphia Film Festival

Anyone familiar with the Taiwan New Cinema movement of the past 20 years, or comparatively the films of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (TASTE OF CHERRY), or even select works of Michaelangelo Antonioni (L'AVVENTURA), will be better apprised of how to palate Lee Kang-Sheng's sophomore effort, HELP ME EROS (2008), with it's long uninterrupted shots (30sec-5min), navigation of peculiar but banal human experience, dire scarcity of dialogue, metered accumulation-based narrative arches, and social commentary mostly devoid of irony (reminiscent of Italian Neorealism). The addition of EROS's more abhorrent sexual leanings seats it on the mantle of recent permutations of the Taiwan filmic movement (THE WAYWARD CLOUD, I DONT WANT TO SLEEP ALONE) that delve into the mire of modernity, and makes it very much of the modern generational context; a new floating socio-political context that garners old wounds. Those new to such labored undistracted tenets of filmmaking may be affronted by the patience required, but their design is such that each moment is held extensively and deliberately so that every detail within it can become accessible to the viewer, burgeoning an experiential and dimensional understanding almost by force.

HELP ME EROS is an ambitious and unrelentingly beautiful film, that is also unfortunately at odds with itself, suspended somewhere between prose and grit but uncomfortable in such tonal ambiguity. EROS unfolds in a world of too little or too much gravity; a stagnant orbit of emotionally starved semi-dimensional characters, fluorescent light, sexual escapism, and commerce, suffering incongruity alongside boldness and brilliance. While writer/director Lee Kang-Sheng mostly overstates his existential meanings with non-diegetic songs that spell out woes like a bludgeon, and falls short in terms of blending his content and aesthetics as a whole, he does succeed marvelously within visual moments, of which there is no shortage. It is these moments of perfectly framed peculiarity, poignancy, comedy, and loneliness in collage, rather than blending, that buoy HELP ME EROS to success. Lee Kang-Sheng's visual language is his strongest asset, with notable thanks to Tsai Ming-Liang as production designer, and helps to enhance if not mask what is otherwise a rather conventional narrative arch.

Read this full review as it discusses the rich visual language of a bold and despairing film from one of Taiwan's rising talents at Blue Key Reviews (Click Here) long with many other titles from this past year including ATONEMENT, LUST CAUTION, 4 MONTHS 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS, and THE ORPHANAGE.

[Aaron Mannino is a Philadelphia area artist seeking to share his distinctive views on film, which, according to Mannino, "is easily the most significant inspiration for my own artwork, and as I see it, an excellent device to supplement cultural immersion and transmission of diverse attitudes."]


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