Vicky Cristina Barcelona
This is probably the best film Allen has directed for a long time. But unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it’s a great film. While there is a glimmer of Allen’s peculiar wit in the voiceover at the start of the film, it ultimately fails to deliver.
Two friends, Vicky (Hall) and Cristina (Johansson) visit Barcelona one summer, and stay with one of Vicky’s expatriate relatives (Clarkson) and her husband.
The two women are very different in their approach to life: one is pragmatic and prone to being over-analytical, while the other is more impulsive. This is made clear at the beginning of the film by a narrator, an interesting and uncommon choice for Allen, to explain the progression of the storyline, and even what the characters are feeling.
Late one evening, while enjoying a drink in a restaurant, Vicky and Cristina are approached by a charismatic artist (Bardem). Having just attended a gallery opening at which they’ve heard stories of his tempestuous and even violent relationship with his ex-wife (Cruz), they are aware of his reputation.
Over the course of the summer, there will be marriage, infidelity, experimentation and dissatisfaction.
Although Allen has written many female characters during his lengthy career, it becomes painfully apparent that his understanding of women remains as elusive as it was decades ago. These women are tragically two-dimensional and lack not only depth, but any ability to draw empathy from this viewer. It is difficult to actually care about any of the characters in this film.
Many of Halls’ lines, especially in the earlier part of the film, are embarrassingly over-written, demonstrating that Allen is quite out of touch with younger women of today. At one point, she even declares that Johansson’s character is “neurotic” for thinking a certain way. It’s like a flashback to one of his films of the seventies.
Johansson, who is capable of acting well, is reduced to being what many American female actors have become: camera fodder.
As for Patricia Clarkson’s character, there is an uncomfortable suspicion that she is simply too old for Allen to care about (despite being considerably younger than he is). We learn that she has settled for a life she is not entirely happy with, but little is done to flesh out her character.
There is an underlying theme of American bourgeois values clashing with the more liberal European attitudes towards relationships and sex, and of the change of environment providing an opportunity for the two central women to explore their attitudes towards relationships and sex.
Cruz is brilliant as the passionate, direct but somewhat unhinged artistic ex-wife, and provides the bulk of the all-too-few laughs in this film.
As the main male character in the film, Bardem posseses an inexplicable magnetisim for the women around him. It’s extremely disappointing that Vicky and Cristina don’t have him pegged for the utter “wanker” that he is, when he first approaches them in the restaurant near the start of the film. Allen seems to be out of touch not only with women, but with how to seduce them.
Thankfully, unlike other latter Allen films, we are spared his inclusion in the cast.
Vicky, Cristina Barcelona is worth a look, is of interest for any Woody Allen fan, and is often very pretty to look at. But it’s hard not to be convinced after seeing this film, that his best filmmaking days are well and truly behind him.