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In the City (Cesc Gay, 2003)
46 09-15-03
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Cesc Gay’s In
the City is a rather slight movie if I ever saw one, but that doesn't mean
it's not an enjoyable one. This talky comic drama traces the romantic escapades
of about a dozen or so characters in modern-day Barcelona to little effect.
Though leagues better than the last Spanish-language sex romp that I saw (the
dismal The Other Side of the Bed), it
is so blandly targeted at the upper-middle class urbanite that it always fails
to excite. It might be upscale, but it's a bit stale. Laughs are few and far
between here, and dramatic confrontation is even rarer. Most of the “big”
scenes take place off-screen, and while that approach avoids melodramatics, it
also avoids dramatics too. It’s almost amusing that it thinks it’s being
edgy when it has one of its characters, who happens to be a housewife, act upon
her lesbian tendencies, but it saves itself from embarrassment by keeping most
of the titillating details of the affair out of our sight. The entire movie,
which features easy listening on the soundtrack and well-timed fades to black at
the end of its sequences, shoots for a jazzy ambiance that it has trouble
maintaining.
In
the City an attractively lit film with good-looking people coping with
issues of infidelity of both emotional and physical types, and it manages to be
pleasant even though it is awfully trite at times. To demonstrate people’s
loneliness, Gay shoots his characters as they eat dinner alone or come home to
find no messages waiting on their answering machine. When a character finally
tries to sum up the movie'’ point of view, he stammers, "Relationships
are... I don't know." That sort of inconclusiveness is probably preferable
to definitive answers in a broad-ranging movie like this, I suppose, but
sometimes there’s not much space between not overstating yourself and not
stating much at all. Essentially, it makes the talky French comic drama The Taste of Others look like a thrill ride, and that’s a feat I
would have thought impossible before now. Among the cast, Monica Lopez and Maria
Pujalte make strong impressions, the former by being tightly-wound but still
likable, and the latter by being unconventionally sexy despite being somewhat
despicable. For all its moment-to-moment flaws, when it’s all said and done, In
the City has done a credible job of demonstrating how one can be in a
relationship and still feel lonely. With the talent that Gay demonstrates here,
however, one can’t help but wish it tried to do a bit more.