I accidentally slept in when Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona was screened for critics here in Seattle. There was only one screening scheduled and so it was up to me to head out to the theater and catch it myself whenever I managed to find the time. It began to look like I would never get a chance to see it, but then on a Wednesday afternoon in early September, following a screening of The Women (what a disaster that film was), I decided to check out a matinee screening.
The theater was virtually empty outside of a handful of blue hairs, one of which was chomping so loud on her popcorn directly behind me I had to get up and eventually move. The film begins. The familiar Woody Allen Windsor EF font gives us the credits over black and white followed by Giulia y Los Tellarini singing “Barcelona” met by the insanely out of place narration by Christopher Evan Welch giving us updates as if reading off a lunch menu. Then it all begins to take shape. The narration seems like it is Woody’s back-handed slap at all narration as he removes all emotion and has it to be read by a non-character. As the film moves on it tends to fade into the background, serving as a subconscious giving useful details, but nothing worth wasting screen time on.
Next comes Rebecca Hall in a performance none of us would have suspected following her most notable appearance as Sarah Borden in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. Her performance is likely to go down as the most overlooked piece of acting in 2008. Of course, it straddles that line of Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, but if her name was Meryl Streep there wouldn’t even be a discussion as she would be sitting atop the Best Actress predictions right now.
Scarlett Johansson gives a great performance as does Javier Bardem, but like Hall, Penelope Cruz shows up late in the game to give a performance as the unstable ex-wife Maria Elena, in a role that I believe proves Cruz is best when performing in her native language. Cruz’s beauty has caused her to understandably be used in a variety of Hollywood films, but nothing is better than Cruz when she is working in Spanish and this is just one more example.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona was looking like it would fall around number four in my top ten before The Weinstein Co. was kind enough to send me a screener after my request and I couldn’t be more grateful. Had I waited to watch this film again when it hits DVD and Blu-ray on January 27 and not named it the best of 2008 I would have been truly upset. It will sit alongside another favorite of mine in Before Sunset as a film that truly transports you out of your life and into the lives of others.
So there you have it… That’s my list of top ten films of 2008.
