Vicky Cristina Barcelona reviews

Post Reply
Mister Tee
Tenured Laureate
Posts: 8637
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 2:57 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Post by Mister Tee »

Screen Daily

Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Mike Goodridge in Cannes
17 May 2008 07:00

Dir: Woody Allen. Sp. 2008. 97 mins .

After a three-film stopover in the UK which reaped generally unsatisfying results, Woody Allen seems to have recovered some lightness of touch and sparkle in Spain as he follows financing around Europe for his annual movie offerings. Vicky Cristina Barcelona, his first of several Spanish ventures, is as close to consistently delightful as Allen has been able to deliver since 1994's Bullets Over Broadway. Given a dramatic boost by the vitality and charisma of Spanish superstars Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, this sunny romantic comedy could well be the director's biggest audience-pleaser in years.

Taking place over a summer in picturesque Barcelona, Allen and his local DP Javier Aguirresarobe (Talk To Her, The Sea Inside) set their attractive cast against a lush backdrop of colourful Gaudi architecture, lavish cityscapes and rural idylls which douse the love tangles and intrigue of the story in a blissful ambiance straight out of a Shakespeare comedy.This is Allen at his most playful and affectionate, knocking Whit Stillman for six with his Henry Jamesian tale of impressionable Americans falling under the sway of Ibero-passion. It's also one of his funniest scripts in a long time, and, unlike the dire Scoop a couple of years ago, the comedy here is confidently aligned with the national setting, the characters and their search for love and answers.

Positive reviews and strong word of mouth, neither a guarantee for so many years now with Allen, will help the film reach more adult audiences than usual although even his most accomplished comedies have strict limits in their market reach. Spain, France and Latin America will be prime markets for the film, but even North America and English-speaking territories should be able to find an audience for Vicky Cristina Barcelona in ways that neither Cassandra's Dream nor Scoop could.

English actress Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson, who were in The Prestige together, play the Vicky and Cristina of the title who arrive in Barcelona at the film's opening to spend the summer with friends of Vicky's parents. Vicky is a sensible, realistic sort engaged to solid affluent New Yorker Doug (Messina), while Cristina is single, more passionate than her friend and resigned to the fact that love entails suffering.

Their hosts, Judy and Mark (Clarkson and Dunn) take them to an art gallery opening one night where Cristina spies a handsome Spanish painter Juan Antonio (Bardem), famous for his turbulent relationship with his former wife Maria Elena (Cruz) which ended when she stabbed him.

Later that night in a restaurant, the women see him again and, coming over to their table, he proposes that he flies them that very night to nearby Oviedo where they can spend the weekend and he can sleep with them both. Vicky responds with horror and indignation to his suggestion but Cristina is immediately attracted to his direct manner and accepts for them both.

Once in Oviedo, Cristina is just about to sleep with Juan Antonio when she succumbs to food poisoning and takes to her bed. Vicky reluctantly has to spend the next day alone with him but gradually falls under his spell and his philosophy that risks should be taken and passion should be indulged. Swept up in the moment, she sleeps with him and is thrown into emotional turmoil.

When they all return to Barcelona, however, he pursues Cristina and she eventually moves into his house. But Cristina's domestic happiness is rocked by the arrival of volatile Maria Elena who starts living with them after a failed suicide attempt. Wildly talented but emotionally volatile and prone to fits of rage and violence, Maria Elena slowly learns to trust Cristina and the three become lovers, while Vicky, whose fiancé has arrived in town, watches with increasing envy.

Allen indulges Spanish stereotypes here – his Barcelona is the city of picture postcards, his soundtrack is guitar-driven (revolving around the song Barcelona by Giulia y Los Tellarini), his Spaniards are hot-blooded Bohemians – but his dialogue is knowing enough and his actors sophisticated enough to avoid too many clichés. Hall is excellent as the sober Vicky unseated by desire and Johansson effective in the part of the adventurous Cristina, but Bardem and Cruz create the comic fireworks, both looking like they are having fun as the nutty exes driven by fiery passion.

Allen fans will be alternately bemused and amused by his choice to have the film narrated (by Christopher Evan Welch), a decision which adds another layer of whimsy to the Midsummer Night's sex comedy of it all.
Mister Tee
Tenured Laureate
Posts: 8637
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 2:57 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Post by Mister Tee »

From Variety. If this is the general take, we may have a new rule: Woody gets one decent movie per country.


By TODD MCCARTHY

"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is a sexy, funny divertissement that passes as enjoyably as an idle summer's afternoon in the titular Spanish city. With Javier Barden starring as a bohemian artist involved variously with Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz and Rebecca Hall, pic offers potent romantic fantasy elements for men and women and a cast that should produce the best commercial returns for a Woody Allen film since "Match Point." And, in the bargain, if Barcelona wants even more visitors than it already attracts, this film will supply them.
Just as London did when Allen went there for "Match Point," the Catalan capital serves as an evident stimulus for the director. Even if the film provides a strictly tourist's view of the city (a perspective justified by the scenario, in fact), and one just as upscale and heedless of money as ever for Allen, "VCB" is by several degrees more hot-blooded than his usual norm, thanks especially due to the palpable chemistry of Bardem and Cruz in the second half.

The film is all about sexual attraction and what to do about it (and in what combinations). Initial proposition along these lines comes soon after best buds Vicky (Hall) and Cristina (Johansson) arrive to spend the summer at the sumptuous hillside Barcelona home of Vicky's older friends Judy (Patricia Clarkson) and Doug Nash (Kevin Dunn); after spotting Juan Antonio (Bardem) at an art gallery, the two all-American beauties are approached by the confident bearded painter in a swank restaurant with the disarmingly blunt offer of joining him in a small town for a weekend of art, food and sex.

Vicky, who's engaged to nice guy New Yorker Doug (Chris Messina) and is vaguely neurotic in longstanding Allen-female fashion, says nay, but when Cristina, who's looking for adventure, says yeah, the trio flies off by private plane to picturesque Oviedo. In different ways, Juan Antonio insinuates himself into both women's lives in the coming days, admitting in passing his abiding love for his ex-wife Maria Elena (Cruz), who once stabbed him in a fury and now lives with a man in Madrid.

Not only because she's available and Vicky's not, Cristina seems a better match for the charming seducer, and she eventually moves in with him while Vicky begins to wonder if she's facing a boring life with Doug, who springs a surprise proposal to come marry her in Barcelona. Cue Maria Elena's dramatic entrance, which throws a monkeywrench into everyone's lives and spectacularly revs the picture's body temperature up from warm to hot.

Cruz, who officially graduated from sex kitten to powerhouse melodramatic actress in "Volver," is in full Anna Magnani mode here, storming up and down mountain peaks of emotion and captivating everyone in the process. Allen even generates affectionate comic mileage from the common rap on Cruz's acting--that she's great in Spanish but blah in English--by having her deliver Maria Elena's colorful tirades in her native language, only to be told again and again by Juan Antonio to speak English so Cristina can understand her. She's dynamite here in either language.

The sexual permutations eventually multiply with the man and two women under the same roof, especially in a provocative red-light-drenched photo dark room encounter between the two women. But Vicky unexpectedly re-enters the picture as well in a very nicely constructed romantic farce that boasts a boisterously amusing climax.

Looking macho but speaking mostly in a tender, sincere way to his women, Bardem is a thoroughly convincing and likable ladies' man. Johansson needs mostly to be open and malleable, reacting to Cristina's life opportunities, and thesp's slower pace serves as a nice contrast to the others. Hall, whom American theater audiences saw on tour in her father Peter Hall's production of "As You Like It," registers engagingly and betrays no Englishness as a woman who suddenly doubts what she thought were life's certainties.

The locations include a laundry list of celebrated spots in the city and environs (Gaudi creations, the Miro Museum, the old amusement park, et al.), all of which shimmer with summer luster through the lens of cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe ("Talk to Her," "The Others"). A soundtrack of local music adds to the vibrating sexiness.

Pic's one significant problem is the narration, frequently employed to fill in background and connect the narrative dots. It would be interesting to see if the film could play without the commentary altogether. But if it's deemed necessary, the bland, tonally off-putting male voice could profitably be replaced, possibly by Clarkson, who plays the one character plausibly in a position to know all the information imparted in the voiceover.
Post Reply

Return to “2008”