'Vicky' a thoughtful exploration of love
By Phil Villarreal
Pvillarreal@azstarnet.com
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.14.2008
Love is so complicated that even a genius who's lived for more than seven decades still hasn't figured it out. But Woody Allen is still trying, and that's the beauty of the meditative, erotic and terribly titled "Vicky Cristina Barcelona."
The movie may sound like a wacky send-up of Latino culture in the vein of "Nacho Libre." Punctuation inserted between each word would have better suited the operatic content. The drama is about two American students — the uptight, structured Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and bohemian, impulsive Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) — and their adventures throughout a long Spanish summer.
Vicky is engaged to a bland yuppie who's always calling her to gab about house decoration and other trivialities. She's mildly unhappy with the direction in which she's heading, but comforted that she's sticking to her master plan. Vicky sees herself as the protector of Cristina, who constantly searches for the type of romance that leaves a lump in your throat. As both women love, lust, lose and regroup, they learn that neither structure nor headlong romance is sustainable.
Enter Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a dashing painter who approaches the women at a restaurant, asking them to spirit away with him to his hometown, where they will sightsee, drink and make love. Vicky scoffs but Cristina is intrigued, and because Vicky won't let Cristina be victimized she grudgingly tags along. That's just as well for Juan Antonio, who makes it clear he intends to sleep with both of them.
To spoil any of the plot would be to take the mystique out of the film, but know that the rendezvous is not confined to the weekend, and Juan Antonio's fiery ex-wife, Maria Elena (Penélope Cruz, who is involved with Bardem in real life), eventually enters the fray.
Juan Antonio is a fascinating character who seems out of place in a movie by Allen, who nearly always builds his film around one or more neurotic, nebbish male characters. Juan Antonio doesn't think his way out of happiness. He truly lives for the moment, shedding the blinders to see life as a series of opportunities to seize or ignore. Bardem's Casanova is the opposite of the Allen archetype, with a boldness and confidence that Allen, or anyone, might adapt if he had the chance to do it all over again.
The four leads turn in endearing performances, living and breathing Allen's introspective writing with ease. The characters move as if on a carousel, making the film an exploration of romantic complications on the level of "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986) and "Husbands and Wives" (1992). His film doesn't steer wrong until a slightly unfulfilling ending.
A recurring sentiment is that romance is only possible in a love that hasn't been fulfilled. That may be true when you're talking about people, but not of Allen's best films, which never lose their thrill.
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