Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008)

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Comedy

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) is a return for Woody Allen to a lighter comic touch, probably his best comedy since the underrated "Small Time Crooks"(2000) with Tracy Ullman and a non-New York film that is as well-honed as his earlier critical hit with Scarlett Johannsen, the murder-drama "Match Point" (2004).

Javier Bardem is a egotistical Spanish painter named Juan Antonio who audaciously comes up to two pretty American tourists one late night at a Barcelona restaurant. His pitch is to try and convince both of them to join him in a small plane trip to a little Spanish town outside Barcelona to see a sculpture. After seeing the artwork and the tourist opportunities of the little Catalan seaport, he hopes they will all go to bed together. (If he wants to bed down with each lady in sequence or in a group arrangement is not specified)

This earthy Mediterranean "charm" works on Christina (Scarlett Johannsen) but not so well on her friend Vicky (Rebecca Hall), who gets off the best lines as a skeptical woman who wants nothing to do with the proposal--at first. Vicky is already engaged to be married to a boring financial yuppie back in New York (with the unfortunate first name of Doug.)
Still, Vickie agrees to go off on a plane trip with the painter and Christina, perhaps to keep this guy from doing something bad to her friend. It gives nothing away to say that things turn out a lot less dangerous but more complicated than either woman expects.

Nor will this turn out to be a big fulfillment of a male fantasy for Juan Antonio either since he has an ex-girlfriend named Maria Elena whom he is obviously still in love with. Things get especially complicated when both Vickie's future groom shows up from New York City as well as Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz). Cruz, who was excellent as a young mother in Pedro Almodovar's "Volver" (2007) gives a fine performance in a staple role for women in a Woody Allen movie: the spurned and psychologically-fragile woman. But she is not quite so vulnerable as the audience is first led to believe; she's the only character who seems to have a fully thought-out plan for romantic happiness (if she's capable of such a state.)

Being that this is a comedy, and not one of Mr. Allen's past thinly-veiled autobiographical films concerning his own precarious romatic life from the early 1990's, the movie chooses funny situations over serious consequences. It's audience-friendly in that the characters are not homicidal/suicidal and filled with despair--well maybe one is, a little. Still, it is not featherweight sexual highjinks either: Vicky, Juan Antonio and Christina are grown-ups and the film doesn't have any big messages other than sexual attractions and diversions can be hard on the psyche's equallibrium--but still, perhaps, worth it. All the major characters still are emotionally-layered enough to give the viewer genuine interest to see how the various couplings and romantic tangles work themselves out.

The film features some great cinematography of Barcelona and its surrounding environs. Woody Allen fans--and even those a bit leary of his later work--will probably find this romantic roundabout charming, if not as engrossing as "Annie Hall" (1977) or "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1985). The excellent Patricia Clarkson is in the movie, too, as Vicky's older relative and confidante. Her part is much too short but she makes the most of it.