Vicky Cristina BarcelonaReview by Nathan Weinbender
Like Three Dog Night, I’ve never been to Spain, but having seen Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” I’ll be on a plane tomorrow. If “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan” were love letters to New York, this movie is a love letter to the city of Barcelona. It features so many landmarks and attractions that it plays almost like a travelogue video, both of the city itself and of Scarlett Johansson’s lips.
Ah, those lips. Allen’s camera lingers on them so frequently that they threaten to upstage the art, the architecture, the overall beauty of Barcelona. Okay, so I’ll admit to having a sort of schoolboy crush on Johansson, but I don’t think it’s unwarranted: Stand her next to “Guernica,” and I defy you to keep your eyes on the canvas.
Johansson plays Cristina, an aspiring young filmmaker whose future is a big question mark. She knows nothing of traditional romance, nor does she know anything of love, recovering from a series of tumultuous, sensuous relationships that ended badly. Her friend is Vicky (Rebecca Hall, also very beautiful), a neurotic, no-nonsense intellectual who is engaged to an uninteresting businessman because she’s attracted to his love of commitment.
Vicky and Cristina are spending the summer in Barcelona, and, whaddaya know, their sightseeing is interrupted when a suave Spanish man seduces them by offering them a weekend of wine, music and lovemaking. He’s Juan Antonio, a terribly romantic, effortlessly urbane artist played by the devilishly handsome Javier Bardem (hell, he’s pretty, too). He invites the women to come with him to a small town that’s a short flight away. Cristina accepts with little reluctance, while Vicky is more hesitant.
Of course, both Vicky and Cristina fall for Juan Antonio, resulting in a frothy love triangle that becomes a quadrangle when Penélope Cruz (also unbelievably attractive) shows up halfway through. She plays Maria Elena, Juan Antonio’s ex-wife, an intense, fiery, disturbed woman who not only rekindles her love with her former husband but also finds herself surprisingly attracted to Cristina.
All of this is frivolous and lightweight and frequently funny, and it’s actually more compelling than anything Allen has written in nearly fifteen years. He’s emulated Ingmar Bergman in the past, a phase that inspired some of his dreariest experiments, and now he seems to be aping Eric Rohmer with this breezy, scenic souvenir of a film—its intentions are simple and its pleasures mostly aesthetic (come to think of it, all of the actresses in this film have tremendous lips).
“Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is certainly not one of Allen’s best. It hardly even tries to be one of his best, but I suppose even the greatest artists deserve a holiday once in a while. Considering the general decline in the quality of his last dozen or so pictures, however, this film seems a step in the right direction. Could this movie signal a return to form from one of America’s great living filmmakers? I hope so.
Grade: B+
Directed and written by Woody Allen. Starring Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Penélope Cruz, Patricia Clarkson and Chris Messina. PG-13; 96m.
Like Three Dog Night, I’ve never been to Spain, but having seen Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” I’ll be on a plane tomorrow. If “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan” were love letters to New York, this movie is a love letter to the city of Barcelona. It features so many landmarks and attractions that it plays almost like a travelogue video, both of the city itself and of Scarlett Johansson’s lips.
Ah, those lips. Allen’s camera lingers on them so frequently that they threaten to upstage the art, the architecture, the overall beauty of Barcelona. Okay, so I’ll admit to having a sort of schoolboy crush on Johansson, but I don’t think it’s unwarranted: Stand her next to “Guernica,” and I defy you to keep your eyes on the canvas.
Johansson plays Cristina, an aspiring young filmmaker whose future is a big question mark. She knows nothing of traditional romance, nor does she know anything of love, recovering from a series of tumultuous, sensuous relationships that ended badly. Her friend is Vicky (Rebecca Hall, also very beautiful), a neurotic, no-nonsense intellectual who is engaged to an uninteresting businessman because she’s attracted to his love of commitment.
Vicky and Cristina are spending the summer in Barcelona, and, whaddaya know, their sightseeing is interrupted when a suave Spanish man seduces them by offering them a weekend of wine, music and lovemaking. He’s Juan Antonio, a terribly romantic, effortlessly urbane artist played by the devilishly handsome Javier Bardem (hell, he’s pretty, too). He invites the women to come with him to a small town that’s a short flight away. Cristina accepts with little reluctance, while Vicky is more hesitant.
Of course, both Vicky and Cristina fall for Juan Antonio, resulting in a frothy love triangle that becomes a quadrangle when Penélope Cruz (also unbelievably attractive) shows up halfway through. She plays Maria Elena, Juan Antonio’s ex-wife, an intense, fiery, disturbed woman who not only rekindles her love with her former husband but also finds herself surprisingly attracted to Cristina.
All of this is frivolous and lightweight and frequently funny, and it’s actually more compelling than anything Allen has written in nearly fifteen years. He’s emulated Ingmar Bergman in the past, a phase that inspired some of his dreariest experiments, and now he seems to be aping Eric Rohmer with this breezy, scenic souvenir of a film—its intentions are simple and its pleasures mostly aesthetic (come to think of it, all of the actresses in this film have tremendous lips).
“Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is certainly not one of Allen’s best. It hardly even tries to be one of his best, but I suppose even the greatest artists deserve a holiday once in a while. Considering the general decline in the quality of his last dozen or so pictures, however, this film seems a step in the right direction. Could this movie signal a return to form from one of America’s great living filmmakers? I hope so.
Grade: B+
Directed and written by Woody Allen. Starring Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Penélope Cruz, Patricia Clarkson and Chris Messina. PG-13; 96m.
2 comments:
As always, Nathan, you've written an intelligent review - though it feels, at times, more of a love letter to Scarlett Johansson. That, however, is understandable.
One thing I think you fail to give Allen enough credit for is the overall sense of desperation that he tries to instill in his characters. All of them are, each in his or her own way, trying to find happiness - and each is struggling with dueling needs (safety vs. challenge, commitment vs. freedom).
I agree that, overall, Allen's sense of humor gives the film a light feel. But the emotions that he is trying to probe are heavy indeed. That he probes them so well, while refusing to give us any easy resolutions, is as much a testament to his reinvigoration as a filmmaker as is his new-found love for shooting sites other than New York.
Although the characters are complex and their relationships believable, I thought that Allen undermined the intelligence of the audience with that awkward, obvious voiceover narration. It didn't seem necessary to me; it was like Allen was cutting corners in the exposition department by having everything spelled out for us. Plus, the narrator sounded as if he'd had a lot of experience doing voiceovers for those promotional videos you can pick up at travel agencies-- "Visit beautiful Barcelona! Take in the splendor of the scenery..." I dunno, if he absolutely had to use the narration, at least he could have hired someone with an enthralling voice.
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