My Go-to Summer Movie
Vicky Christina Barcelona is the pinnacle of of early 2000’s coming-of-age, mid-life crisis cinema. Through a warm, orange tinted lens, this steady film about two polar opposite best friends who spend the summer in Oviedo, Spain, grapples with desire, curiosity, and expressive excavations of the youthful and indulgent kind.
Released in 2008, this film captures how I imagine an idyllic, messy, mythical summer abroad would play out. Whether you’re a Vicky—rational, analytical, scholarly, disapproving—or a Christina—searching, curious, sensual, tolerant—the film enwebbs you into a series of inner investigations regarding how we see the world, love, and our-selves in moments of transition and yearning. It is not only about yearning and desire, but about discovering ourselves in relationship with another and through experiencing the world.
It is in the moments when we meet someone who challenges our long held notions, barriers, and dissatisfactions with the world that we are compelled to liquify those barriers and see what sparks, even if for a moment…Only to wake up the next day and return from our foolishness, as if from the dead, back to a semblance truth.
But really, what happens in this movie, is that characters never really return from their nights of sleep walking and vulnerable surrender. They are awakened from their imposed limitations. Whether it be a reasonably crafted composure, or a romantic idealism, the characters Vicky and Christina capture the experiences of people who will seemingly never recover from the jarring and sudden revelation of what it means to tase life, only to later discover that there is more, still, to uncover. This movie, to me, is about play, awakening, desire, and curiosity. A curiosity about the world and what it has to offer that can often lead to swift and resolute solutions, but still, leaves us in a state of awe and knowing that there is more, still, to uncover in this grove of ours. More to taste, and more to see, in the words of Levertov.
