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Allen Comes Back Strong With 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona'

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By CHRISTY LEMIRE

The Associated Press

Published: August 17, 2008

You should hate these people, really, these smug American yuppies chatting gaily about golf, tennis and boating over red wine on a sun-splashed Spanish afternoon.

You're also free to abhor the painters, poets and musicians who populate Barcelona and spend their bohemian days idly debating the merits of love and art.

Somehow, Woody Allen makes us not just tolerate them but find ourselves engaged in their adventures in "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," his strongest film in quite a while.

It's a romantic comedy, yes, in the writer-director's great tradition of absurdity and longing. But it's also tinged with melancholy, letting us know Allen isn't just mocking his characters but also feeling a certain amount of sympathy for them in their confusion, which inevitably evokes a similar response from his audience.

What's fascinating is the juxtaposition he has created here: In obviously stilted, overly literary tones, his narrator describes his characters' every action and emotion, and yet they themselves consistently act in impulsive, contradictory ways. These are civilized people, behaving badly but played straight by the actors, and that's the chief source of laughs.

"She was grounded and realistic," the narrator says of Vicky (Rebecca Hall) as she and her fellow American tourist, Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), absent-mindedly gaze out the windows of the cab carrying them from the Barcelona airport toward the summer of exploration that awaits.

Hall and Johansson co-star as best friends who couldn't be more different. Vicky is a practical and structured student pursuing her master's degree in Catalan culture, and she's engaged to marry the very proper, dull businessman Doug (Chris Messina).

Cristina, meanwhile, is a restless and passionate aspiring photographer who is fresh from a disastrous attempt at making a short film and yet another tumultuous breakup.

But both bright young women respond in surprising ways to sexy artist Juan Antonio (an irresistible Javier Bardem), a stranger who invites them to spend the weekend with him. Vicky naturally thinks he's a Eurotrash cliche and tries to fend him off, but Cristina is intrigued - and who could blame her?

Then Penelope Cruz enters the picture, a force of nature as Juan Antonio's tempestuous ex-wife, Maria Elena. It may be the best work of Cruz's hit-and-miss career. Johansson will get all the attention, of course: Those lips! Those eyes! That platinum-blond mess of hair! But "Barcelona" wouldn't be the same without Vicky or Cristina. Or Juan Antonio. And certainly not Maria Elena.

MOVIE REVIEW

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

***½ (out of four stars)

MOVIE BOARD RATING: PG-13; for sexuality and smoking

STARS: Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem

DIRECTOR: Woody Allen

LOCATION: See Movie Times, Page 15.

PLOT SUMMARY: Two women travel to Spain and become involved with a charismatic painter.

RUNNING TIME: 97 minutes.

ON THE WEB: www.vickycristina-movie.com/

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