Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Movie Review (2008)

“Vicky Cristina Barcelona” bubbles along so smoothly within the elbows of writer-director Woody Allen’s wit and mischief that few will dismiss it for being the movie its trailer suggested it would be--a slight detour through one of the world’s great cities with summer’s best-looking cast tagging along for the ride.

For those who love Allen, appreciate his intelligence, humor and wordplay, and how seamlessly he can sheathe in and out of his characters’ ruinous conflictions, anxieties and passionate misgivings about life, sex and love, there’s a lot to be said for his latest film, which is his best since “Match Point.”

The movie has a frothy candor that’s at once complex and funny. It skewers new money, old money, society, artists, poets, musicians, romantics and the like, but never at the cost of allowing us to lose affection for them. That’s key to the film’s success, and Allen never loses sight of its importance.

Given its location and its cast, the film is beyond heated and sexy--moments burn, but rarely without a comic undercurrent. It’s how well Allen strikes that balance that makes his movie one of summer’s best, most enjoyable romantic comedies.

The film opens with the brunette Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and the very blonde Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) leaving New York City to spend the summer in Barcelona. There, they will stay at the lavish home of Vicky’s family friends (Patricia Clarkson, Kevin Dunn), while Vicky aggressively studies Catalan culture, learns the language and swoons over all things Gaudi. We learn this not only by watching the movie, but also by its clipped narration, which Christopher Evan Welch delivers with such sneering disdain, judgment lurks at every turn.

About Vicky. As played by the very good Hall, she certainly is a rigid piece of work, that one, but also curious, which likely is why she’s such close friends with Cristina, a free spirit whose willingness to try bold new things allows Vicky the opportunity to reinforce her false idea in herself. In an early scene, Allen depicts her as a woman who clutches her morality close to her bosom, while Cristina, on the other hand, is more than happy to offer up her own bosom to the smoldering Spanish stranger who approaches them one evening at a restaurant.

His name is Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem, excellent), he’s an artist with enough stubble to suggest robust levels of testosterone, and what he proposes to each woman is time away with him in the land of Oviedo. There, he will drink wine with them and make love to them, an idea that makes Vicky recoil in false modesty, but which titillates Cristina to the point that she agrees to go.

Naturally, Vicky relents, and what transpires during their time away is chaos that only intensifies upon their return to Barcelona. There, Allen introduces us to Vicky’s brittle fiancé Doug (Chris Messina), who has the moral center she insists she has, and where he also introduces us to Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz), a hot mess of the first order who looks as if she just tumbled out of a bar by way of a year-long Vogue fashion shoot. As Juan Antonio’s gorgeous wreck of a suicidal ex-wife--not to mention his past and present muse--Maria Elena is the very reason the movie erupts into such a boil when she hits the screen midway through.

Those who know Cruz when she worked with such directors as Pedro Almodovar, Alejandro Amenabar and Alvaro Fernandez Armero will find in the terrific performance Allen pulls from her the gifted actress Hollywood nearly ruined when they featured her in such bum movies as “Blow,” “Gothika,” “Sahara” and “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.” Her award-winning performance in 2006’s “Volver” wasn’t just a return to form, but also a second chance for the actress. It’s nice to see she hasn’t squandered it.

As for Allen, he’s doing just fine, thanks. As usual, plenty continue to gripe that he’s lost his edge, that he’s no longer relevant, and that he’s too old to reclaim his old groove (this is becoming tiresome, no?), but to them, one wants to point out what they can’t see.

Since becoming something of a cinematic expatriate in recent years (his last three films--“Match Point,” “Scoop” and “Cassandra’s Dream”--all were filmed in England), the director now moves on to Spain, where his imagination wanders along a new countryside in hopes of better understanding those issues that always have interested him. Specifically, the complexity of human relationships, the knowledge that life is filled with more unhappiness than happiness, and--at least where his comedies are concerned--the willingness to work through those issues with a sense of humor wrapped around a larger sense of the absurd.

Sounds pretty vital to me.

Grade: B+