Things happen fast in world affairs—and in intimate ones—which is why subjects slip from the contemporary to the historical in a flash. That’s the underlying issue in Whit Stillman’s 1994 comic drama “Barcelona,” which takes as its premise the last hot days of the Cold War (a period that came to a close, we thought, with the end of the Soviet Union, in 1991). The story of two young American men in Spain—a naval officer and a businessman—and the young Spanish women they meet depends inextricably on the politics that they encounter with their new friends, and friends of friends, and friendly enemies, and just plain enemies. Stillman takes those ideas—of political alliances and sympathies—seriously, and suggests, without a dogmatic insistence but with a quiet sincerity, that the political ideas in question pack major consequences for the lives of individuals. But he also knows that they’re not deterministic in the lives of individuals, that the historical stakes and the intimate ones, the long-term scope of ideas and the immediate desires that drive people, are utterly dissimilar, askew, even contradictory. And that’s why “Barcelona” is a comedy, and why the romance that drives it is so subtle and so complex. Stillman’s current project is a pilot for a Web series set, once more, among American expatriates, this time in Paris; it’s called “The Cosmopolitans," and I’m jumping out of my skin with impatience to see it.
Movie of the Week: “Barcelona”
