This closes out the trilogy by Whit Stillman that I started years ago with Metropolitan and really, I shouldn’t have bothered. It’s still about young adults being self-important and clumsily falling in love, this time in Barcelona, Spain under a cloud of anti-Americanism. The fast patter of the dialogue Stillman appears to favor is familiar and there is a certain charm in his characters. But I can discern no meaningful heart in it and the attitude of both mocking the bourgeoisie and yet wholeheartedly embracing it is just grating when there is no real payoff to the dichotomy.
Ted Boynton is an American executive who has been by his Chicago-based company to head their office in Barcelona, Spain. He is disgruntled when his cousin with whom he has a combative relationship since childhood arrives to stay with him temporarily. Fred is a lieutenant assigned with the US Sixth Fleet and has been sent to Barcelona in preparation for a fleet visit. Anti-American sentiment is strong in Spain at the moment and indeed shortly after Fred’s arrival, the local USO office is bombed. The American consul decides to play down the trouble and keep a low profile but Fred deliberately wears his officer’s uniform in public and defends the US. Meanwhile the two cousins flirt and date with the local Spanish women, especially the coterie of attractive girls who work at the nearby trade fair. Ted is attracted to Montserrat who reveals that she is involved in a complicated relationship with Ramon, a Spanish journalist who is stridently anti-American and something of a womanizer. Fred gets close to Marta who merely seems to tolerate him.
The emotional heart of this film is the relationship between Ted and Fred, which is sometimes contentious and sometimes collaborative, punctuated by their women troubles. It’s awkward and badly developed however as the film doesn’t establish their childhood feuds with one another until much later and there’s no real conviction in their acrimony. The female characters are not developed at all, being doubly strange to the two American men for being both women and foreigners. To compound it all, none of this feels remotely realistic. The actresses are definitely not Spanish, it’s unbelievable how Fred is able to stay so long in Barcelona pretty much doing whatever he wants while the fleet is out at sea, and when violence happens, it’s nowhere near enough of a big deal. Where’s the rest of the family when Fred gets hurt? Why is he still stationed in Barcelona? None of this makes the slightest sense.
The strong prejudice against Americans among the Spanish shown here was a twist in the premise that I didn’t expect and I have no idea if it’s historically accurate. It does allow Stillman to add another dimension to the inner conflicts of his characters. Even as Fred unironically defends the USA, the film itself gently mocks the shallowness of American culture. Ted mindlessly spouts the latest management theory buzzwords as he worries about getting fired from a job he doesn’t really like anyway. He also agonizes over the meaninglessness of relationships with girls who are physically attractive while still obviously being attracted to them. It’s the same kind love-hate apropos to the bourgeois lifestyle that characterizes the rest of the trilogy. It’s an okay theme to expound on but rather clumsily handled here. The characters aren’t particularly interesting, there is no cleverness in their dialogue and everyone is annoying in that they’re all so eager to show off what they know.
It’s a damning thing to say but I honestly think that this film is at best television-level work with average acting and no real care put into its cinematography. Stillman must have been coasting on the success of Metropolitan to have gotten this made because it’s not a good film at all.