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Gaudi Afternoon review

"It's a frothy romp played for
the fun of it, and when the silliness dies down the pic can easily be forgotten."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Director Susan Seidelman ("Desperately Seeking Susan")
presents a fluffy screwball comedy and private detective mystery story
much in the gender-breaking style of a Pedro Almodovar film, but with less
force and verve and trust in the characters presented. It is set in Barcelona,
Spain, the temporary location where the unattached, cynical and much travelled
grumpy American, Cassandra Reilly (Judy Davis), is eking out a living translating
a cheesy South American novel into English. The screenplay is by James
Myhre, from the novel by Barbara Wilson. The titular (Antonio) Gaudi is
the namesake of the nouveau architect who created many fine designs in
Barcelona and designed the ritzy plaza marvelously photographed in one
of the film's main scenes, which took place one afternoon.

Cassandra is frustrated because she lives alone and has no man in
her life, and has no permanent home because she is still upset over her
unhappy childhood in Kalamazoo. On top of that she's having trouble translating
the book and is vexed over the noise in her apartment building that comes
from an argument between her friend and landlady Carmen (Barranco) and
her hubby Paco, who is an Elvis wannabe. Her horde of screaming children,
whom the writer detests, add to her inability to concentrate when trying
to work on the novel. Also, she doesn't have enough dough to pay the back
rent and feels in the dumps about the way her unexciting life is going.
Arriving straight from San Francisco to spice up her dull life is the mysterious
femme fatale Frankie Stevens (Marcia Gay Harden), who claims to be a friend
of a friend and who is willing to pay her $3,000 for a couple of days work
of playing detective to locate her estranged husband Ben. She hasn't seen
him for two years but needs him to sign papers so as not to lose his inheritance,
which pays her bills. The plot is not airtight and far from logical, but
that can be excused because it's a screwball comedy and not a major drama.

The film is loaded with plot twists and ex-patriates who are eccentric,
as the plot line keeps changing in every scene and tries to have some fun
with the kooky characters and their foibles. Frankie turns out to be a
pre-operative transsexual, and her "husband" Ben turns out to be butch
lesbian Lili Taylor, who has traveled to Spain with their precocious daughter
Delilah and her live-in kooky 'new age' airhead girlfriend Juliette Lewis.
They are living in the pad of a bisexual San Francisco magician and wealthy
art patron named Hamilton Kincaid (Bowen), who adds mystery to the goings
on when further details of the changing plot is revealed.

It's a frothy romp played for the fun of it, and when the silliness
dies down the pic can easily be forgotten. But under Seidelman's capable
direction even though the film meanders from its 'nothing is as it seems'
theme, it still never gets completely lost. Davis works her acting magic
on such pifle and makes her world-weary traveller part have some pathos–though
the tidy ending was hard to swallow. Harden also excels as the lady in
a man's body trying to hang on to her wig, her feminine instincts and the
child she came to get.

There were a few lines I really got a kick out of, with my fave being
the one said by Harden as she observes Barcelona for the first time: "It's
so refreshing, even the children smoke here." I also liked one of Lewis'
lines: "Fuck the mind not the gender."

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