Vicky Cristina Barcelona
September 17, 2008
Woody Allen's love letter to European art and beauty is, at its base, a Dear John to love itself, where marriage is seen as stodgy and boring and free sex, though problematic, is bohemian and cool. At 73, Woody's still figuring out relationships, but now it feels less like a man trying to cope with the love of his life (“Annie Hall”), or the peculiarities of marriage (“Husbands and Wives”), than an old man fantasizing about young lust and the choices that ultimately lead to heartbreak and cynicism. Not that love and cynicism have never meshed in Allen's work before, many of his best films in one way or another have been about the differences of men and women, sex and commitment, and here, embodied in American tourists Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall, who while on a summer vacation in Barcelona meet and sleep with sexy painter Javier Bardem, whose troubled ex-wife (Penelope Cruz in another Oscar worthy performance) adds flavor and complications to the trysts, the line between casual sex (“making love” as Bardem stresses in a sleepy European lilt) and deeper emotional feelings is thinly blurred. What keeps the film from being a repetitive and ordinary entry to Allen's relationship canon is the European setting, which seems to have inspired Allen to write crisper dialogue, peppering his talented cast with a mixture of sensuality, romanticism, and psychoanalysis. It may not live up to his previous excursions into the minds of men and women and what makes them choose one bed from the next, but given Allen's two decades of mostly misses, this is a solid hit.
By Adam Suraf