Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

gavin6942 Ted, a stuffy white guy from Illinois working in sales for the Barcelona office of a US corporation, is paid an unexpected visit by his somewhat less stuffy cousin Fred, who is an officer in the US Navy. Over the next few months, both their lives are irrevocably altered by the events which follow Fred's arrival, events which are the trivial stuff of a comedy of manners at first but which gradually grow increasingly dramatic.I am not familiar with films directed by Whit Stillman, but going through my list of things to see, I am sure he will pop up a bit. Barcelona, his first studio-financed film, was inspired by his own experiences in Spain during the early 1980s. Stillman has described the film as "An Officer and a Gentleman", but with the title referring to two men rather than one. The men, Ted and Fred, experience the awkwardness of being in love in a foreign country culturally and politically opposed to their own.Studio-financed or not, this has the feel of a 1990s indie film. Very much in the vein of Richard Linklater and early Kevin Smith. He seems to have come up at about that same time when overly-talky scripts were the rage, sort of taking the Jim Jarmusch backbone and fleshing it out with witty dialogue. I mean this as a compliment, because I really enjoy this sort of film, but they also seem to blend together... maybe after I see a few more, I will recognize what makes a "Stillman film".

Maynard Handley IMDb's intro to this movie starts "Ted, a stuffy white guy from Illinois working in sales", and there, right away, we have the problem. If you're an arrested child, who thinks that the idea of working in sales equals death, and that considering the consequences of your actions equals "stuffy", then I expect you will hate this film. But for the rest of us, it's a breath of fresh air. Other people have said what's appealing about it --- the unexpected zigs and zags of the story, the amusing (though not laugh-out-loud funny) dialog, the portrayal of a dynamic between two guys that's touching without ever being cloying. But for me what I enjoyed was the (depressingly rare) chance to see people acting as adults. It is nice to see someone who takes their job seriously and tries hard to do well at it, rather than concentrating all his energy on goofing off and avoiding the boss. (This goes for both Fred and Ted.) It's nice to see people thinking seriously about what is and is not working in their romantic lives and how to fix it. It's nice to see people not relying on ridiculous clichés about fate and destiny as the solutions to all their problems. Meanwhile, on the other side, it's nice to see all this seriousness but in a movie populated by basically decent people, people you don't hate, in a movie that isn't ramming some sort of absurdly non-subtle message down your throat ala most indie cinema. I'm pretty impatient with movies. I'd say 70% of the movies I watch, after 10 minutes I switch it off because the movie has in no way captured my interest. I haven't laughed, I haven't been surprised, all I've seen is the same old **** I've seen a million times before. Maybe it's the husband and wife fighting with each other. Maybe it's the "those were the days" kids playing. Maybe it's the nerdish guy being belittled by other people at work. You know what I mean --- five minutes into the movie and you know the stereotypes every character fits, and exactly how it will all play out. What so appealed to me about this movie is how (without "twists" or gimmicks) it doesn't follow that path. The primary characters kept growing and revealing new aspects to their characters throughout the movie in a way that's all too rare. Give it a chance!

The_Deputy Whit Stillman is in solid territory when making movies about upper middle class and wealthy American WASPs. But I think he does an injustice in this movie to Barcelona, one of the most wonderful cities in the world. Naming the movie "Barcelona" is almost like it's the definitive movie on Barcelona. But the movie is about two bozos from the US who come to Barcelona and find much of it alien and hostile. This would be fine from their subjective standpoint, as it might seem that way for fish out of water, but the movie makes it seem as if people in Barcelona are objectively the way they're portrayed, which is quite silly. The "Spanish" people in the movie aren't even Spanish, the blonde girl is English, and Mira Sorvino is American of Italian descent.If you want to see a Whit Stillman movie that's better, and where he's on more familiar territory, I suggest you see something like "The Last Days of Disco".

livinkity All I have to say is- this is definitely one of my favorite movies. I happen to be big fan of Whit Stillman, and this is probably his best movie. The only thing to mention would be that particularly leftist individuals may find the movie offensive.