I stepped into the theater expecting to be bombarded by nonstop nudity and threesomes, but was pleasantly surprised. Perhaps I should have expected more from Woody Allen. His films are typically rooted in dialogue, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona is no exception. However, sometimes his message gets lost or threatens to bore you to death; this gem is quite different.
The story follows college friends Vicky and Cristina as they head off for a summer of sightseeing in Barcelona, taking in the beautiful city while being courted simultaneously by the same mysterious Spanish painter.
Rebecca Hall portrays the neurotic Vicky, a hyper-focused and recently engaged women dead-set on her vision of the future. Her best friend Cristina, played to perfection by the ever-awesome Scarlet Johansson, is a free-spirited woman with lots of creative energy but no outlet to plug it into.
During their time in Barcelona, a chance encounter with the underground artist Juan makes them reassess their ideas of love and life.
The sexy seducer is none other than recent Academy Award-winning actor Javier Bardem, who brings a brooding intensity to the character as he juggles both women’s emotions and shares with them his philosophy – that life is short, meaningless and needs to be lived from one moment to the next.
Barcelona itself deserves to be billed as a main character here, thanks to the treatment it gets from cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe. The audience is invited to soak in the sunlight, hang on the beautiful architecture and practically sip red wine with the lovers. Love scenes are warm, trusting, filled with passion and intimately shot.
Do not, I repeat, do not go see this movie expecting to watch a popcorn flick, but an in-depth portrayal of love and lust.
Allen uses the movie as a symbol for relationships; friendly, crazy, passionate, somewhat sad, confusing and leaving you wanting more. There is also a lot of America in the two tourists – the idea that they will never truly capture Juan’s form of love, just like we will never fully comprehend his language. We are foreign to this kind of passion and therefore it leads us into disaster; stability is portrayed as an empty, lonely land.
It’s obviously not Allen’s greatest movie to date (cough*Annie Hall*cough), but it is certainly one of the strongest films he’s produced in recent years.
More importantly though, it felt as if the movie jumped off a lost page from his late-1960s idea book – this is a piece of actual cinema! That is so important in an era where real movies seem to have been replaced in our culture by giant blockbusters – The Dark Knight an exception – that are as shallow as the gene pools of their creators.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona dwells on art and creativity throughout. It’s enthralling to see a movie that follows through on what it preaches.