Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Brief: Two friends, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), are invited by Vicky's aunt (Patricia Clarkson) to spend the summer in Barcelona. There they meet Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a painter who takes an instant liking to them. The return of Juan Antonio's ex-wife, Maria Elena (Penélope Cruz), complicates matters.

There's been a lot of talk about how if this movie had come out before Match Point, it would have been heralded as writer-director Woody Allen's return to form and that one would have been considered the retread. I'm not sure I agree. For one, I'm not sure that there is such a thing as a "return to form" for Allen. I've been operating under the assumption that there is no form, or at least no one form, for him. For two, I didn't see the classics first. I saw movies like Everyone Says I Love You and Small Time Crooks long before I ever set eyes on something like Manhattan, so my view of what makes a Woody Allen movie a Woody Allen movie is somewhat skewed. That said, while I may not know whether this movie is more or less Woody Allen (whatever that means) than Point, I do know that I don't think this movie is better than the former.

There are some good points, though, chief among them Bardem and Cruz. I read in an interview with Allen that Barcelona could have been pretty much any city, and that Barcelona happened to work* (I guess that means that we have cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe to thank for the architecture porn). I wonder whether Vicky Cristina Rome really would have been the same. What Italian actors would he have found that would have brought the star wattage and sex appeal that those two bring? Bardem's devilish matter of fact delivery saves a number of clunkers (why so literal, Allen?), and Cruz's manic combination of comedy, sensuality, and pathos keeps the scenes buoyant. I think I may have turned the corner on Cruz. This is by far her best English language performance.

I think I may have turned the corner on Johansson as well. I think I'm over her. There came a moment late in the film where Johansson didn't quite gel for me, and I wasn't sure if the problem was that Cristina, acting, didn't sell it, or Johansson, actor, didn't sell it, or if it was a combination of the two. The fact that I can't tell the difference is problematic. It's easy enough to apply narration over a silent Vicky that makes her seem more complex (the problem was never that I thought that her portrayer was empty-headed), but that can only take you so far. It's up to Johansson to go the rest of the way, and I don't think she does.

Yes, narration. I realize that I've got a well documented mental block when it comes to narration, and I doubt I am going to ease up on that anytime soon. It works well enough when Allen wants to drop in bits of exposition without having to stick any unsightly dialogue in his characters' mouths, and there is one scene where we honestly wouldn't have known that a mistake was being made unless someone told us. Okay, I was going to expand that to "scenes," but then I thought of something that he could have shown us that would have done away with the need for narration and, in doing so, thought of a later scene that does away with even the narration in the one scene where I originally thought it necessary. So, good for exposition in this case and not much else.

I realize I have yet to say anything about Hall, and I have been remiss in doing so. Though the American accent trips her up little bit, everything else she is doing (her mannerisms, her body language: there's an excellent kinesthetic sense that Hall brings to Cristina) is spot on. I definitely want to see more of her.

The sun-dappled vistas are a nice contrast with the pessimistic view of love that Allen presents here. It may not be all it could be, but it is very good. B+

*Then I stopped reading, as it seemed to be a spoiler heavy interview.