Something completely different ...

Took time off from the campaign trail to go to Woody Allen's "Vicky Christina Barcelona" in Dundrum last night. As a break from the politics let me tell you about this film which I very much recommend.

As you might expect from Allen, this is a psychological drama in the European tradition. There are no explosions, killings, detectives, politicians, aliens etc etc.

It is a film that affords the audience some respect - you would be a long time waiting for a Hollywood blockbuster in which the main character analyses her husband's twitterings in Kantian terms. The philosophy espoused by another main character, tortured Spanish artist Juan Antonio Gonzalo (Javier Bardem), is, in part, straight from the works of Prof Viktor Frankl, whose aphorism "say yes to life in spite of everything" reappears here in condensed form.

In the opening scenes we meet the female protagonists, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) who is boring and conventional and her friend Christina (Scarlett Johansson) who is flighty and adventurous. The friends are spending the summer in Barcelona as the guests of an older couple, Judy and Mark. We expect the film to be about Christina but as the film progresses it seems to be Vicky that feels the upheavals of the human condition much more keenly.

Penelope Cruz won an oscar for best supporting actress as Gonzalo's unhappy ex-wife Maria Elena, though her character is something of an inessential court jester in the drama. The friends' host Judy is a much more central figure to Vicky's inner turmoils in the sense that she is an older version of Vicky who has settled for a conventional existence. The film rails against the conservatism and materialism of American society which is embodied in the bourgeois husbands that Judy and Vicky have taken. (It is hard to get away from politics after all!) Anyway I enjoyed it thoroughly and do recommend it.