Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
Three's
Company
(Vicky Christina Barcelona, 9/8/08)
By Nicholas Nicastro
When
was the last truly compelling Woody Allen movie? Did it appear during
the Clinton administration—or the term of the elder Bush? Hard
to say, but there's no doubting Allen's determination to grind on and
on, releasing features at a rate of one a year, piling disappointment
upon disappointment until the prospect of respecting Woody again seems
as unlikely as falling in love with your ex-wife.
His M.O. has been as persistent
as his output: cast the latest hot talent/Oscar winner from mainstream
Hollywood, getting him or her into a Woody Allen movie before the star's
big-budget follow-up appears (e.g. Charlize Theron and Kenneth Branagh
in Celebrity, Will Ferrell in Melinda and Melinda, Scarlet
Johanssen in Match Point, Hugh Jackman in Scoop). Insert
him or her into a scenario featuring the usual Allen big themes—the
cupidity of sex, death, guilt and moral redemption. If Woody himself
does not appear in the movie, allow other stars to stand in for him,
replicating all Allenesque tics, verbal mannerisms, and harrumphing.
Release the film at some time of the year devoid of competition, say
early spring or early fall. Then, in the majority of cases, watch the
result disappear from theater screens before most of the intended audience
has a chance to see it.
His latest offering, Vicki Christina
Barcelona, is the first Allen movie in a generation to break the
pattern. Granted, it includes the hot talent/Oscar winner (Javier Bardem,
the killer from No Country for Old Men), and it features the
usual themes (the cupidity of love). It also has the Allen stand-in:
Rebecca Hall, an otherwise fetchingly freckled young actress, is the
ersatz Woody this time. But Vicki Christina seems like the work
of a somewhat rejuvenated, unbuttoned Woody, playing as if it was dreamed
up during a vacation to the fabled Catalan city. It breaks the pattern
because it's actually pretty good.
Hall and Scarlet Johanssen are Vicki
and Christina, two American gal-pals spending the summer in Barcelona.
In addition to tapas and Gaudi, the city boasts Juan-Antonio (Bardem),
a broodingly handsome sculptor who, two minutes after meeting them,
invites the girls for a weekend getaway of wine, music, and sex. Hall
and Johanssen are Sense and Sensibility, respectively, falling for Juan-Antonio
for their own reasons and in their own ways as their weekend unfolds.
The real fun begins with the appearance of Juan-Antonio's crazy ex-wife
(Penelope Cruz), a woman so complicated she's a ménage a trois
all by herself.
Like Match Point, Vicki
Christina isn't marketed as a Woody Allen movie. Indeed, if you
tilt your head a little, and focus your attention on the film's stunning
actresses as they cavort in sunsplashed Mediterranean locations, you
might imagine you're watching something from Whit (Metropolitan,
Barcelona) Stillman. Johannsen, for instance, has nothing of
the cerebrality of Allen's previous girlfriend/muses, coming off instead
like a coiled spring of sensual energy. By directing her to lock lips
with the ever-smoldering Cruz, he's saved generations of computer programmers
the trouble of faking the image in the future.
True, Allen can't resist inserting
himself by adding a track of omniscient narration that adds nothing
to the romantic mood. But the act of setting his last few films in Europe
seems to have had an inspirational effect on a director who once swore
he would never leave Manhattan. For a number of more talented filmmakers,
working in exile has been an occupational hazard. In Allen's case, an
expatriate phase has done him some positive good .
©2008 Nicholas Nicastro
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