Vicky Cristina Barcelona, (Woody Allen, 2008)
American tourists doing things on the continent, with some passionate locals. Upper-middle class artsy hijinks ensue.
First of all, I cannot remember Allen putting such an explicit emphasis on youth (well, youngish people) before. The faces and figures of Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), Vicky (Rebecca Hall), Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) and Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz) are lingered over by Allen and his cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe (
Talk To Her,
The Others,
The Road) in beautifully framed and lit close/medium shots, which gives the film a fresh and glowing look that helps overcome the occasional fussy mannerisms that sometimes (and lately, more often) mar Allen's work. The editing and script are also quite focused. No painful diversions with secondary characters or fanciful subplots. In some respects, this treatment brought to mind the work of Eric Rohmer, with his emphasis on youth, beauty, and lots of talking. I have a great fondness for Rohmer's films, due to his wit, and his ideals of beauty and youth, and so a little of this fondness slipped over into my experience of Allen's film.
What starts out as your typical bedroom farce, with Bardem as the "artist", Johansson as the voracious blonde, and Hall as the uptight bourgeois actually starts to gain some substance in character development and performance. The dialogue and narrative is typical Allen, but instead of going for broadness or caricature, he holds back and lets the characters have a little space to exist and develop on their own. The important point here is that Allen never undercuts any of the characters and their motivations. What they do has motivations based not just on the necessities of the plot (although that is always a necessary pleasure, too), but from the core substance of the characters. Juan Antonio pursues not only women, but anything of beauty art, music, wine. "Life is short, dull, and full of pain." He wants to enjoy everything he can, while he can.
The narrative tone shifts wonderfully with each episode and encounter, going from farce to harmony, from giddiness to sad compromise. Ultimately a pessimist, Allen wrings as much joy, pain and emotion as can be expected from an American adventure on the continent, and then leaves his protagonists a little richer, wiser, and sadder at the choices they make, and are made for them.
To sum up: when you put four gorgeous people in an exotic locale, have them do things to each other in pleasing and not-so-pleasing-but-it-could-have-been-worse ways, add a little rumination on the meaning of life and love, and a lot of Allen-esque upper-middle class artistic-intellectual banter, I will not be overly surprised, but it's not going to leave a bitter taste in my mouth.