CINEMA: Stanley Peskin
IT was in the city of Barcelona that Queen Isabel=20 received Columbus on his return from the New World. In=20 Whit Stillman’s Barcelona, there is a witty reversal of=20 this event as he describes the experiences of two young=20 Americans abroad in post-Franco Spain. Although the film=20 is set in the 1990s, it evokes the early and mid- Eighties, the time of the sexual revolution in Spain.
The two protagonists Ted (Taylor Nicholls) and Frank=20 (Chris Eigeman) are, respectively, a self-fancied=20 gentleman in sales for the Illinois High Speed Motor=20 Corporation, and a naval officer concerned with=20 promoting American values, democracy and hamburgers. Not=20 only does Ted worship Benjamin Franklin, Dale Carnegie,=20 Frank Bettger, all of whom are salesmen in one form or=20 another, but he also has romantic illusions about women=20 which are shattered by the free-thinking Spanish women.=20
Frank, on the other hand, has a carefree attitude=20 towards sex and is prone to making up stories (involving=20 de Sade, leather underwear, and weekends of fun) about=20 Ted. He also, with disastrous consequences, tells his=20 girlfriend Marta (Mira Sorvino) that he is a CIA agent.
There is some amusing word play on America as an ant- farm whose colonising ambitions are held up to=20 inspection and debunked. But if America is perceived as=20 a place of materialism, vulgarity and violence,=20 Barcelona, too, is seen in terms of betrayal and=20
The film is talkative, and apart from some contrived=20 plot devices, uneventful. The relationship between the=20 two cousins, which has its roots in a past of acrimony=20 and affection, is well handled. If Barcelona is a little=20 trying at times, it is also enjoyable and well acted.