Film Review: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

August 21, 2008 by Svetlana  Send to a Friend

If there is a perfect summer movie this year, than that is “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”.
It feeds into all your hopes and dreams of what a vacation should be (if you were an obviously privileged, smart and beautiful young traveler): culture, good food, good wine, good conversations, sex with Penelope Cruz, sex with Javier Bardem… you know-EVERYTHING a vacation should be.
Without the pesky visa problems to boot.

Anyway, ringing in at a tidy 97 minutes, this is probably Woody Allen’s most dynamic and good movie I’ve seen in a while, and the one you’ve been waiting for forever (”Scoop” while very narrative based, lets face it, sucked and “Match Point” while stylish and maybe even sporadically sexy, was hugely annoying) as well as his third collaboration with Scarlett Johnasson (who plays Cristina) in 3 movies.

She’s his new ….something.
Which I find to be amazing and perplexing and mind boggling and fascinating, because the woman, while indubitably pretty, looks so dead on the inside that it drives me insane every time she is on screen, her lips half parted, her eyes not moving, the words just rolling out monotonously out of her bee-stung mouth.
It is like Woody Allen is too busy jerking off to notice his new “something” cannot act.

THANKFULLY, everyone else in the movie can.
Rebecca Hall (a shoe-in for lanky, smart, jewish girls after her “Starter for Ten” turn) gets to play “the Woody Allen”, the overwrought, neurotic New Yorker (Vicky) who has everything and nothing she wants, and cannot stop obsessing about it.

Penelope Cruz, who plays Javier’s soulmate (in that “can’t live with her, can’t live without her” fashion, and who is apparently dating him in tabloid life too) should never, ever not act Spanish because she is such a ball of fire and joy one could just look at her eyes and mouth move forever.

Patricia Clarkson is perfectly patrician.

And Javier Bardem is….well, he is the sex.
For real.

When, early on in the movie he saunters over (yes, saunters!) to Vicky and Cristina’s table (who have freshly arrived to Barcelona, each in hopes of some kind of a escape) and invites them to Oviedo to “see a sculpture, eat good food, drink good wine and make love” (how is THAT for an opening line?) we collectively (As a movie theatre) blushed into our popcorn and I had to unbutton a button on my shirt.
Just because.
Naturally, they (mainly Vicky) are appalled but also, naturally, they say yes.
I mean, its Javier Bardem.
You would say yes too.

What transpires afterwards is an utterly charming comedy of manners AND emotions, of sense AND sensibility, in which we realize that people are often not in love with a person, but WITH AN IDEA OF THAT PERSON (or the idea of a life with that person) and that no matter how hard we try to rationalize our decisions, we really, really never know what we want, and need a gravelly voiced narrator to tell us that (the narrator, btw, is one of my favorite things in the movie, just perfectly dead pan and with his tongue sooooo deep in his cheek it may as well be between his teeth).

The dialogue is smart, and witty and very Allenesque but somehow a teeny bit less annoying these days because Woody gets to spread a little bit of neurosis around the cast, instead of hogging it all to himself.

See it. Buy tickets in advance too. Its been selling out.

Oh yeah, and Scarlett and Penelope do make out.
This is a sex tourism movie directed by a horny 70 year old man, of course they make out.
Its the only time in the movie Scarlett’s mouth opens a little more, so enjoy it while it lasts.

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