I was in traffic, thick traffic which was getting thicker and slower as the clock began to move quicker and quicker and for nearly an hour I was worried that I would miss Tim completely at the airport. We'd never made any confirmations and I feared that he would get on a train and come back up to France alone if I never found him. By the time I got to airport I was twenty-five minutes late and I made a loop around the terminals and then parked ran inside, scanning all the arrival times. I knew the flight number and I had looked up the American terminal online but there I was another twenty-five minutes into waiting, running, searching, sweating with no ideas, no information and no Tim. I wandered outside and hurriedly paced up and down the terminal, fighting off the urge to smoke-everyone was smoking on the sidewalk outside the terminal- when I saw a list of airline names under the Terminal A sign and realized that I was in the wrong place. I was walking at a clip down towards Terminal B and I chanced to look to my left and saw the background to the opening shot of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, a hundred foot Miro mural spanning the gap between terminals.
It is October and the weather is hot and damp and even at 9 if you start walking you start sweating. Tim is waiting patiently and I finally find him in front of Terminal A only a minute or so after I find Miro. I don't know what the off-season is in Europe, but it seems like there is not any such thing in Barcelona. The airport was full and busy. The streets were packed and the only places that were not were in or near the Casco Viejo. Tim had never been to Barcelona and I wanted to show him the Cathedral and Parc Guell and some of the streets and galleries around the Picasso Museum. At every turn I was looking for someone, expecting someone, surprised when I didn't see them. At first I thought it was Chris or David, who had been with me the very first time I went to Barcelona, six years ago, and then I thought that it was Jess whose presence in Barcelona and absence from Barcelona had defined my spring vacation that same year, or Josh and Ariel who had been with me on that vacation while she was gone. Then I thought maybe it was Joanna and Uraci who I had seen two years later and who had saved my whole ten day trip with tortilla and wine and books and a kitchen when I didn't want to see anyone or do anything except avoid whatever it was that I felt obligated to do while I was there. Then, just as we were leaving the Casco Viejo I realized that I was looking for Vicky and Cristina and Maria Elena and Juan Antonio.
I don't know what I mean exactly by "looking for." I just know that I was turning corners whose narrow, sun-filled streets were naked without one of the characters from the film to clothe them; they were my own canvas without the colors those characters had put there by drinking and eating, photographing and loving. I was expecting Barcelona to be only what I had seen recently on film rather than everything it had been in breadth and width and depth for more than half a decade. The leviathan, lethargic crowds augmented the irony I was feeling. By the time we arrived at Parc Guell I felt as though Tim and I were the only ones there among what must have been no less than two-thousand foreigners.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona is not as funny as it seemed while I was watching it. For some reason it had more of the character of a comedy without as much of the actual comedy. It's nowhere near as funny as some other Woody Allen films and yet when jokes are made (whether in words, "Of course I looked in your bags!" or quick, characteristic Woody Allen cuts, "There is no way I am going to Oviedo" to a small plane in a storm) they are light and lively, they are comical consequences of passion. The sparing comedy compliments the more serious romance: both reveal the difficulty of confronting the limits of will power. What power do we have to keep our hearts to ourselves, to keep other hearts to ourselves, to let go of them?
Barcelona is a lively city. It is a city that maintains its light, colorful and warm character amidst an endless barrage of tourism. It is a Catalan city in Spain. While it is part Spanish it's identity is not tied up in the web of violence and force of eloquence and raw power of history that characterizes the Basques. In short, where the Basques are Dramatic (and, at times, tragic) the Catalan are comedic. And Barcelona is their center. Their comedy is attractive, opening, welcoming. The uniqueness of the city-its history, architecture, "culture"- somehow outlives the torrent of shit that is perpetually thrown at it by way of guide books and tourism and artwork-I'm thinking of films-"about" it. For so many it is a place that is "visited," not lived in. Look in the faces of the thousands of people you see in a day walking around the city, shopping, eating, drinking; you can see through their eyes right into their heart. And you see nothing.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona assumes both of these views: traveling is revealing of desire and Barcelona is a place that people visit (even Juan Antonio, the Spanish man Vicky and Cristina meet, is from Asturias, not Catalonia). But the film takes on a somewhat archaic perspective of traveling. It is more The Sun Also Rises than On the Road. All of the characters attempt to turn themselves into something else, something that is possible in that one place. Their growth constitutes the action of the film. The characters who are unaffected by the city (Doug and Mark) are out of touch with romance and out of touch with themselves; they have no idea what their spouses want and they are obsessed with categorizing: a marriage is a certain kind of relationship, a man needs this, a woman need that, romance begins with this contrived and nebulous moment and augments itself by these similarly contrived and nebulous stages. If you ran into Doug or Mark walking, shopping, eating, drinking in Barcelona what would you see in their eyes?
I did not sleep last night nor the night before and I blame Barcelona. I blame Barcelona for having disrobed before me six years ago and then having left the door closed but unlocked ever since. This is what I take to be the meaning of the title: it's not Vicky and Cristina in Barcelona, it's Vicky and Cristina and Barcelona. Barcelona is a woman or a man who, like Picasso or Gaudi, presents life before you and then lets you choose. I did not sleep last night nor the night before because I have not yet chosen and I had forgotten that I had to make a choice until yesterday morning when I saw Miro.
