Column:
'Vicky Cristina Barcelona' close, but not quite
Published Sept. 2, 2008
When a director falls in love with an actor, the results can be either delightful or catastrophic. With "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," Woody Allen has certainly not struck gold, but more likely silver instead.
Vicky (Rebecca Hall) is smart, sensible and on vacation with her best friend Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) in Barcelona. In their wanderings into the Spanish art scene, they encounter the saucy Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) and later his firecracker ex-wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz). Juan Antonio invites the two American tourists to his bed in a matter of a few sighs. The film takes off from there.
This being Allen's third film to star Johansson (the first two being "Match Point" and "Scoop"), one would think Johansson had exhausted her welcome in to the community of Allen aficionados. But Allen gets her just right here and she outshines Cruz and Bardem in the process. He got her started off right in "Match Point" as a seductive, failed actress and lost her completely in "Scoop" as a goofy journalism student. Here he hits the nail on the head, with Johansson as Cristina, who is sexy but not totally confident in her seduction of Juan Antonio. Cristina is a coupling of the two characters Johansson played before, the naughty Nola and simple Sondra.
Most immediate reviews have showered Cruz with praise, but this is not Cruz at her best. She speaks a superfluous amount of Spanish; parts of the script I wonder whether or not Allen could've written. The Spanish feels appropriate in the heat of Bardem and Cruz's battles, but it alienates the viewer and the actors when these two characters are pushed to their most extreme of caricatures.
Complaints that the movie's characters hem too close to stereotypes of the curious American tourist and scintillating, forever-at-arms Latin lovers definitely have some validity. Allen does surprise us, however, with Hall. Not only does she get to lay Bardem, but she also gets away with her sunburned fantasy.
If there was a lesson to be learned from their trip, it lies in the message that, yes, emotions and lovers are fleeting, but there is also value in the stability one is able to maintain in life. Juan Antonio and Maria Elena completely miss this message, and as artists it is their responsibility to do so. But Vicky, simply a lover and surveyor of the arts, not an artist, cannot enter their world.
Allen is always able to end his films with a strong dose of bittersweet resentment. In his later works it comes through the bronzed film grain imbued over color. Since he has gone off to Europe, it feels as though he has tried to recapture that same old frowning smile through a more rosy lens - and it took three films and the silver-plated casting of Johansson, Bardem and Cruz to do so.
Rating: 3.5/5
