It's the early 1980s and Ted, (Taylor Nichols) the twenty-something sales representative in Barcelona of the Chicago-based Very General Electric Co, has an unexpected and not very welcome house guest, his egregious cousin Fred, Lt. (j/g) U. S Navy (Chris Eigeman). Ostensibly, Fred has been sent to check out bars in advance of a fleet visit, but it's more likely he has been sent to Barcelona by some senior officer desperate to get rid of him.
Ted and Fred meet up with a group of attractive girls working at the Trade Centre and do some heavy-duty bar-crawling. Ted is recovering from a broken relationship and he soon becomes enamoured with the gorgeous Montserrat, one of the Trade Centre girls. This is despite his policy of not falling in love with good-looking women, because looks, he says, are a barrier to deep and meaningful relationships. She, however, is also involved with Ramon (Pep Munne), a local anti-American academic turned journalist. Ted, once inspired by Arthur Miller's great play, is no longer sure about his vocation as a salesman and is convinced he is going to be fired. Fred never lets the truth get in the way of a good story and tells the girls various preposterous things about Ted, including that he is a keen sado-masochist. This surprisingly arouses their interest, but Ted insists he is only going to bed with the woman he wants to marry, and that woman is Montse. But she seems to have taken up with Ramon again.
Things take a more serious turn when Fred, dressed in uniform, having previously been exposed in the local press by Ramon as a "AFL-CIA" agent, is shot while riding in a taxi by a man on a motor-scooter and lapses into a coma. Ted becomes quite obsessive and stays by Fred's hospital bedside around the clock talking and reading to him. The girls come too, reading such bed-time stories as "War and Peace". An emissary from Chicago arrives to talk about Ted's professional future and Fred fears the worst. But this is a comedy, not a drama, and things are resolved not too unpleasantly, with more than a touch of irony.
Critics have described this as a cerebral movie, and there is a lot of talk, but a lot of it can be described as only semi-intelligent. One feels sorry for Ted, stuck with such a selfish silly ass as Fred, his only cousin, but it's hard to extend the sympathy to Ted's overly serious attitude towards life in general. Here is a man who reads his bible (King James version) while jiving to the sound of Glen Miller. He needs to learn a little from the Spanish, one feels. Americans abroad, bearers of the dominant commercial culture, are, it seems slow to learn the value of other cultures. One would think that with a beautiful, educated and intelligent teacher such as Montse (played by an Australian, Tushka Bergen), Ted would catch on quick, but alas he is a slow pupil and does not change enough in time.
As a movie reflecting its location, this is a very fine effort indeed. Barcelona, as your correspondent can attest, is a truly gorgeous city and the bustle of the Ramblas - the bar and cafe life- is evident. Director Stillman passes on the Gaudi architecture, but we see lots of other fine buildings and vistas. It isn't a travel film, but it won't deter people from visiting Barcelona, especially the Trade Centre.
Part of a trio of "off-beat talkfests" - the others are "Metropolitan" (1990) and "The Last Days of Disco" (1998) - this one stands on its own as a wry comedy of manners. Why can't Americans understand why others are anti- American? Well you see it's because Americans are ants and can't see themselves as others do. The villains are those like Mario who report on the anthill to the rest of the world, for they are anti-American. At least that's one explanation offered in the film. Me, I think Americans, or at least privileged ones, are just plain spoilt - they've turned self-absorption into their way of life. But, as Stillman shows, they can provide amusement for the rest of us.
