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Vicky Cristina Barcelona

4 stars out of 5.0

Two young American friends, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) are spending the summer in Barcelona. Vicky has a fiancé back home. She’s all about getting down to work on her research. Cristina is quite different. She prefers to take life as it comes. She’s looking for a good time and hasn’t thought twice about tomorrow.

So far, so Woody Allen, right? An exotic locale, a couple of young beauties and a diagrammatic thesis he can string a few jokes on over the course of the next hour and a half or so. Having written him off so often lately – it’s been ten years since Woody made a movie I enjoyed – I wasn’t encouraged by the opening scenes of this one.

Enter Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a famous Spanish artist who has been gracing the gossip pages after a painful separation from Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz). He approaches the girls at a restaurant one night, flirts with them and invites them to accompany him on a trip out of town for the weekend. What does he have in mind? Some good food and wine, some art, and, hopefully, sex, he says. Vicky is appalled, but there’s no way Cristina isn’t going – even when it turns out Juan Antonio means to fly them that very night in his own light aircraft.

An actor of supreme confidence in his own masculinity, Bardem might be the anti-Woody. He doesn’t appear to have a neurotic nerve in his body. He seduces the audience as easily as he beguiles Cristina. Vicky takes a little longer, but not so long as all that.

Like the two girls, at first glance Juan Antonio seems close to caricature: the bohemian artist with a roving eye. Yet Bardem gives the character depth and feeling; his hedonism is a philosophy, not a game. Of course he may not be an ideal romantic partner over the long term, but he doesn’t pretend to be.

There may be melodrama lurking in the wings, but Allen steers a subtler course than we expect. Juan Antonio and Vicky establish a connection, but almost immediately he moves on to Cristina. Is this gallantry or its opposite? How does sensible Vicky feel now that this element of chaos has absented himself from her life? She isn’t sure, and Allen mines that confusion for much more than farce.

Enter Maria Elena. Juan Antonio’s ex crashes back into his life like a meteor flaming into the earth. Where Bardem is plain and soft-spoken, Cruz comes on with eyes blazing, her dialogue ripping between Spanish and English, all snorts and cigarettes… It’s the full Flamenco. Very funny, passionate and wild. She’ll eat Cristina alive, we think. She does, but not in that way. The trio winds up in bed, an occurrence that would have sent the old Woody into over-excited wisecrackery, but which is presented here with a very continental nonchalance.

It’s a scenario that might on the one hand have turned into something like Sisterhood Of The Travelling Pants 2, or on the other one of Eric Rohmer’s bittersweet romances. It’s a delicate line that Allen treads and it’s good to see him make it to the other side safely.

It’s not perfect though. For reasons known only to the Woodman Vicky Cristina Barcelona is layered with a redundant voice over which, on the plus side, gives the film a short story feel, but which keeps insulting us by explaining character nuances that are already clear on screen.

Still, that’s a minor price to pay. Veteran DP Javier Aguirresarobe (Talk to Her) shoots Barcelona with suitably gaudy reverence – it’s the best-looking Allen movie in a while – and if the soundtrack choices are obvious (Paco de Lucia, Isaac Albeniz, "Barcelona") I doubt that anyone will mind. It’s a touching, funny, rather wise movie, well worth seeing on its own merits. And the reunion of Jamon, Jamon couple Bardem and Cruz – both on top form – makes it close to a must-see.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com

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