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Woody's back on form with Vicky Cristina Barcelona
5 Feb 2009
If ever a movie killed two birds with one stone it’s this romantic comedy from Woody Allen. It serves brilliantly to please its Spanish hosts, with copious tourist views of Catalan attractions, and provides well-written parts for a quartet of actors who run with them.
Any resemblance to Allen’s last few films is purely coincidental. This is much better, even though it’s determinedly silly, and possibly wishful-thinking, in essence. After what we’ve seen from Allen from Match Point onwards, its sheer entertainment value is a minor miracle.
Its two attractive but not terribly bright American tourists in Europe are Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson). Cristina is restless and looking for a suitably sexy piece of male flesh, while Vicky is more sensible but trapped between her dull lawyer fiancé and a more exciting life away from home.
They then meet Javier Bardem’s sexy Spanish painter, who clearly has designs on both of them — and indeed any other piece of female flesh that comes his way. They both succumb to his charm until the painter’s ex-wife (Penelope Cruz) enters stage left. This puts the cat among the pigeons and Allen, armed with a clever screenplay, turns the screw unmercifully.
It’s all a fairly daft fantasy — the painter is a stereotype of darkly handsome Spanish men. Any halfway sophisticated woman would know exactly what he was up to — but then we wouldn’t have a movie.
As for Cruz’s passionate, provocative ex-wife, she too is a figment of Allen’s imagination — though the actor is good enough to carry all before her with a display of theatrical high jinks you have to see to believe.
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What we get throughout is playing of quality (particularly from Cruz and Hall), a good deal of wishful-thinking, views which are as colourful as the characters, and Allen talking to us about love, sex, pain and pleasure as if he were Moses with some new tablets (Viagra perhaps?).
It’s not Annie Hall. But don’t believe a word of it and you’ll be splendidly entertained
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Reader views (1)
I cannot believe the Standard's four-star review, and the unlikely claim that Woody might be getting back to his best. Aside from the unlikely fantasy of a storyline, the most irritating aspect was the Narrator's voice-overs telling us what we were about to see. Narrator: 'Vicky and Cristina went to a restaurant and had a meal.' Action: Vicky and Cristina have a meal. Narrator: 'Vicky made love to the Spanish painter.' Action: Vicky and the Spanish painter make love.'Totally unnecessary and annoying.
I must say up until two years ago I thought that Scarlett Johansson was one of the bright young things coming out of the US. I mean with talent. But she has been in so many poor quality films of late, 'Wimbledon' the dreadful 'Scoop' to name but two, I feel she is allowing herself to be set up, sadly, as nothing more than a sex-symbol, a lass with a lovely body, that we can all delight in. No problem there from a viewer's aspect, but it does diminish the actress I really think she is. Naomi Watts is an example of a young actor who is taking the right path; one that I thought Miss Johansson would follow. Sadly not!
- Roger Goldsmith, Southsea, Hants, 19/02/2009 13:58
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