Vicky Cristina Barcelona

For many years now Woody Allen has written his movies like chess matches, with a basic black/white opposition and a more or less entertaining series of moves to a resolution which, more often than not, is a draw between the two points of view. One match/film finished, he immediately starts on a new one. The basic structure is the same and the only issue for the audience is how engaging can he make each round. With Vicky Cristina Barcelona he manages to some extent to do this with a novel location and four hot players (Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Penélope Cruz) and a new cinematographer, Javier Aguirresarobe, but despite the visual attractiveness of the film it never amounts to more than a pleasant re-packaging of familiar material.

Allen’s Barcelona is little more than an Iberian Manhattan, much as Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a rewrite of his 1979 movie of that name. As did that film, this one opens with a voice-over (oddly, by Christopher Evan Welch, who has no part in the movie) that introduces the two women who form the axis of a story, as was Manhattan, about the search for love. The characters, all of whom are very well-to-do (which in Bardem’s case means driving a spotlessly clean natty red sports cars and literally, flying away on weekends) do the usual Allen things – go to art galleries and ”little” restaurants, talk about Scriabin and their need to find themselves and indulge in relationship gymnastics.

Though light in tone, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is not a comedy, however, and there are no one-liners or, in the absence of Allen, a stand-in for the director himself. Allen clearly wanted to separate this film from his more familiar fare but frankly, a Woody Allen movie needs the schlemiel. As with all Allen movies, however, there is a strong sense of the director methodically laying out his own thought processes and using his players much like chess pieces to demonstrate a particular thesis. In this respect there is no real advance on Manhattan – Allen is no clearer on the subject of love than he was 30 years ago, and, given that he is now well over 70, you’ve got to be a little disappointed about that

Rebecca Hall is both beautiful and captures her character’s emotional confusion well but both she and Johansson are blandly WASPish compared to Bardem’s classically Mediterranean alpha-male and Cruz, who sizzles with libidinal energy (they became a real-life couple) and whose appearance in the latter part of the film gives it its probably only really memorable moments.

Perhaps for anyone with only a passing familiarity with Allen’s films, Vicky Cristina Barcelona will prove reasonably entertaining. For the rest of us there is more pleasure to be had in his extensive back catalogue.

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