(Note: This article appeared in the 27 August edition of the Piedmont Post.)
You don't have to be overly familiar with Woody Allen's extensive oeuvre to enjoy his newest film, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," a sensual, finely tuned exploration of love's confusion staring some of the most gorgeous people on the planet. It is an engrossing investigation of the difficulties of knowing what one wants in and from love, difficulties compounded when you know what you want, but can't attain it.
Billed as a romantic comedy, Vicky Cristina Barcelona's main characters are so desperately lovelorn and lost that most moviegoers will be too wrapped up in their juicy love quadrangle to think twice about laughing. And that's not a bad thing.
Vicky (Rebecca Hall) is a level-headed graduate student spending a summer in Barcelona studying the buildings of the Spanish architect and artist Gaudi. She is joined by Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), an impetuous, wandering soul regarded by her friend as a "mental adolescent." While Vicky's stated goals for the summer are academic, Cristina is eager to fully immerse herself in the indulgent side of Catalan culture—art, wine, leisure, sex and passion—and her prayers are at least partially answered soon enough.
It's not long before the ladies encounter Juan Antonio, a talented abstract painter, artistic celebrity, and dyed-in-the-wool romantic played to perfection by Javier Bardem. Throughout the film Bardem has the sultry, punch-drunk look of a wolf on the prowl. He approaches Vicky and Cristina in a restaurant and with only the briefest of introductions proposes that the two friends fly to Oviedo in the north of Spain with him for a weekend of food, wine and sex. Cristina is instantly charmed, Vicky less so, but Juan Antonio's magnetic sex appeal is undeniable, and the ensuing tryst is unadulterated voyeuristic candy.
While Cristina is the first to be seduced by Juan Antonio, she falls ill at the worst possible moment. With Cristina incapacitated, Juan Antonio focuses his sight on the reluctant Vicky, and he captures his willing prey after filling her full of wine, tapas and Spanish guitar. Vicky would love to give herself over to Juan Antonio. She yearns for him endlessly, as does Cristina. But inevitably some entertaining wrenches are thrown into the works.
For one, Vicky is engaged to Doug, a preppy young go-getter back in the States who keeps interrupting her Spanish dream with lovelorn phone calls. Cristina and Juan Antonio, both hopeless romantics with insatiable appetites for life's rich treats, seem perfect for one another and move in together. Problem is that Juan Antonio is recently divorced from and clearly pines for Maria Elena (Penélope Cruz), a frenetic apparently bipolar sex bomb.
When Maria Elena tries to commit suicide, Juan Antonio rescues her and brings her back to live with him and Cristina, which is initially an inconvenience. Soon though, Juan Antonio, Cristina and Maria Elena establish a healthy ménage a trois of a relationship. Meanwhile, Vicky still lusts for Juan Antonio, she and Doug elope in Barcelona, and everything goes awry when Cristina makes one of her idiosyncratic impetuous decisions.
If all of this sounds like a month's worth of soap opera episodes crammed into 90 minutes, you've got pretty good ears. There's even an attempted double murder and a disenchanted matchmaker to help Vicky Cristina Barcelona fit
the daytime soap bill.
To his great credit, Woody Allen manages to keep Vicky Cristina Barcelona above the level of crass melodrama. Much of the film's success is due to the sexy, talented cast, especially Bardem and Cruz, whose gazes might have you sweating in the air conditioned movie theatre.
In the end, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a delightful, indulgent way to pass a late-summer afternoon or evening, and may have you asking yourself some of the same questions facing the main characters. That, or make you want to move to Spain.
