Whit Stillman's idiosyncratic social comedy on a pair of sniffish, self-absorbed, fatuous young Americans abroad: male cousins, more exactly, in the sexually liberated, politically volatile Barcelona of the declining days of the Cold War. (Cousins, loosely speaking, of the preppies and debs of Stillman's first outing, Metropolitan.) It's no good trying to argue that the affectedness and artificiality of these people are properties shared by the ones in the works of Jane Austen or Henry James or Ivy Compton-Burnett. Those writers of dialogue were never so prone to fall into the rhythms and structures of TV sitcoms: "Shootings, yes. But that doesn't mean Americans are more violent than other people. [Pause.] We're just better shots." [Cue laugh track.] And the not quite perfect deadpans of Taylor Nichols and Chris Eigeman, the occasionally still twitching pans and winking pans and arching-eyebrowed pans, only accentuate the sitcom ambience. But at the same time, these people, in their actual sentiments, in their readiness to prod their sluggish brains to their philosophical limits, talk like nobody else in movies or on earth. And as characters (not as anyone you might want to have over for dinner), the sincere long-term-relationship seeker is greatly enriched by a strain of old-time religiosity, and the flippant wild-oats-sowing one is similarly enriched by a strain of priggish ROTC patriotism. The director's somewhat stiff, pedestrian visual style is nothing much to speak of, but then again the simple sight of a young man studying his Bible while shuffling his feet to Glenn Miller's "Pennsylvania 6-5000" on the phonograph is not something you are ever going to see anywhere else. And the visuals, however little may be said of them, never do anything to disrupt the smooth, even tone of the writing and acting. (1994) — Duncan Shepherd
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