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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

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#1 of 1 Posted 8/8/08 5:34 PM

From harveykarten Posts 744 Last Nov-19
To All [Msg # 23348.1 ]

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA

MGM/ The Weinstein Company
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: A-
Directed by: Woody Allen
Written By: Woody Allen
Cast: Javier Bardem, Patricia Clarkson, Penelope Cruz, Kevin Dunn, Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Messina
Screened at: Dolby88. NYC, 8/7/08
Opens: August 15, 2008

We all know people like the ones Woody Allen focuses on in his wonderfully scenic, exuberantly romantic “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” From my small circle of friends and former associates, the woman most similar to one of the leading characters is married to a rich, successful doctor. She never had a need to work and raised a couple of kids who turned out just fine. Yet, she confided in me, there was another man she thinks she should have married, a guy more passionate, more imaginative than this physician, one who did not spend all his time talking shop (he is an artist of some sort) and who’d do things on the spur of the moment rather than meticulously plan vacations and the like as though he were making suggestions to a worshipping patient.

This woman I know shares a common bond with Vicky (Rebecca Hall), the first third of the title of Woody Allen’s movie. All three are characters: Vicky; Cristina, who is played by 23-year-old Scarlett Johansson, and the sensuous city of Barcelona, on Spain’s Eastern seaboard. People are complex—which is why divorce is so common since you’ll always find some ingredient missing in a marriage—yet Allen sets up Vicky as the stable one, the woman about to be married to Doug (Chris Messina), a successful lawyer who is determined to buy a house in New York’s Westchester County and talks shop, golf and electronics. Her best friend Cristina is perpetually unsatisfied, a passionate creature who is unlikely to last in marriage to anyone. Both women are beautiful: both go to Barcelona to unwind and to give Vicky the materials she needs for her Master’s thesis on Catalonian culture. Neither expects what develops, which is an intense sexual relationship with Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a strikingly handsome and successful artist, who believes that “life is short, dull and full of pain,” so why not take pleasure where it’s offered? His come-on to the two women is anything but indirect as he invites them fly with him in his private plane to Oviedo for a weekend of food, wine, sightseeing and making love.

The adventurous Cristina does not hesitate. Vicky thinks no way. Of course they go, they both wind up in Juan Antonio’s bed albeit at different time, and both meet the Don Juan’s tempestuous ex-wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz). Not only does Juan Antonio force Vicky to reconsider her upcoming marriage to the bourgeois, stable lawyer back home but sees what her life can become if she marries Doug. She notes the dull but surface stability of her married friends Mark (Kevin Dunn) and Judy (Patricia Clarkson). Judy is cheating on Mark with a business associate.

By the film’s conclusion, you may wonder which of the two young American women will have the happier life. My money is on Vicky. Bourgeois stability may be dull for the most part—talking with your upscale friends about whom to hire for your decorator, whether your 60-inch plasma TV will go better on the wall or on furniture, and what college you should put money away for long before your kids turn eighteen. We watch how Maria Elena comes close to committing suicide despite her ravishing good looks and her talent with the piano and photography, a woman who “can’t get no satisfaction.” We wonder what will happen to Juan Antonio when his two American tourists go home and his ex-wife winds up in an institution: will he be content jumping from affair to short relationships until he no longer projects his youthful charisma?

Expect fine acting all around. The dependable Scarlett Johansson is beautiful almost beyond words, a woman who has appeared in Woody Allen’s “Match Point.” Allen newcomer, Rebecca Hall , whose resume includes Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige” and Tom Vaughn’s “Starter for Ten,” has been known principally for her work on the stage, such as in her father, Peter Hall’s, production of “As You Like It” and “Galileo’s Daughter.”

Javier Aguirresaroabe’s camerawork is nothing less than a free commercial for Barcelona tourism, a city that brags not only of a sparkling business center but also of the winding, cobble-stone streets that beckon millions of tourist annually—to say nothing of Gaudi’s church, a leading, unfinished attraction that is a metaphor for the concept that romance is romance only until it has been completed. (Another way of putting this is that romantic poetry would not exist if every potential writer were completed and happy with his or her partner.)

On the one hand, film-makers are turning out product more complex, deeper, with dark humor—like “Dark Knight,” which has enough complexity and mayhem for critics to warn parents not to take their children. On the other hand, some film-makers known for their arty output, are taking a chance at commercialism, e.g. Mike Leigh (“Vera Drake,” “Secrets and Lies”) has just released “Happy-Go-Lucky,” a frothy fair without a spoonful of darkness. Woody Allen’s film for the year 2008 is his most commercial entry in years, meant as a compliment for this remarkable bit of celluloid. Even the soundtrack is to die for, featuring some snippets of Spanish guitar from the repertory of Isaac Albeniz, and Giulia Tellarini, Maik Alemany, Alejandro Mazzoni and Jens Neumaier’s intriguing, oft-repeated song, “Barcelona.” Mr. Allen, who had tanked with serious fare like the Ingmar Bergmanesqe “Shadows and Fog” and who has failed to get anything like near-unanimous positive reviews from the critics, now gives us “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” filmed in Spain’s busiest and most cosmopolitan city. What would Mr. Allen let us see as a sequel: a movie entitled “Juan Antonio Maria Elena Sevilla,” or perhaps “Doug Vicky Bedford Hills?”

Rated PG-13. 96 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

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