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Woody Allen's latest is a fiery and sexy film about love and lust with a stellar cast more than suited for Allen's classic neurotic, smart, sophisticated, intelligent and distinctively adult dialogue. Barcelona provides a seductive backdrop for this tale mixed with bohemian free love and more uptight New York sensibilities. It's a film that dives deep into the spirit of love and sex and what it means to follow your hearts desires. Love isn't sensible in any way and Allen's script illustrates this perfectly by portraying two completely different leading ladies who both fall for the same man. This man happens to be Juan Antonio, a passionate painter who propositions Vicky and Cristina (childhood friends) to a weekend of food, wine, sights and sex in a neighboring Spanish island. From there the two women's life styles clash with one another and their surroundings as they begin to fall in love with this wild and sexy bohemian spirit. What makes this set-up so interesting is that the casting is so pitch perfect. Vicky, portrayed by Rebecca Hall, plays the uptight neurotic New York woman. She's intelligent and stuffy and at times you have a feeling that she is playing the Woody Allen role in the film. It's refreshing seeing this role go to a woman instead of a man and it shows that Allen's neuroses are pretty universal and are not defined by sex or gender. Hall gives the role some nuances that are missing from most "Allen" roles, especially in the second half of the film when her heart is pulled by both what she knows is right and what she knows could lead to disaster. Cristina is played by Allen's latest muse, Scarlett Johansson. In Allen's past films I felt he never really knew how to use Johansson appropriately. In Match Point (a film I loved) she was used as the sex pot, but with her manish voice and slightly typical looks it was a strange choice. In the end you bought into it because there is something remarkably different about Johanson when compared to most other women working in film today. In Scoop she was supposed to be plucky and comic, but the film suffered due to her unconvincing performance. But here as the would be free spirit with conflicting emotions, she works quite well. Cristina doesn't know what she wants out of life and simply goes wherever the wind takes her and then later quickly discovers she may have made a mistake. She is the perfect catalyst to explore the films central conflict, which is between Juan Antonio and his ex-wife...
Javier Bardem is PERFECTLY cast as the painter Juan Antonio with the broken heart and misguided notions about love. In fact, I have never seen Bardem be so charismatic and lighthearted as he is here. It's just such a relaxed and, here comes that word again, SEXY performance. Sitting in the theater I couldn't help but fall in love with Juan Antonio myself. But it is his ex-wife played to perfection by Penelope Cruz who pulls the rug out from under everyone. Cruz is on fire as the passionate, yet crazed ex-wife who is still very much in love with her ex-husband. I have always thought Cruz was an actress with potential who has just never quite gotten there, but here she really makes it work. From her first scene to her last you can see the layers of vulnerability going on with this character and the intense passion that lies beneath her weathered exterior. It's a great performance and it comes in at just the right point in the film when things start to slow down a bit to throw some much needed spice into the mix.
The film is expertly photographed Javier Aguirresarobe who makes the city of Barcelona a character within the film inhabiting almost every single frame. Allen always manages to work with some of the best foreign cinematographers and Barcelona is no exception. Combine this with Allen's best and most insightful script since Hannah and Her Sisters and his own sure-fired direction - what you have is one of the best films of the year.
Much has been said about how in recent films Allen has lost his way as a filmmaker. My response to this is that Allen never lost his way... in fact I believe we have lost ours. Allen has always been a classic filmmaker inspired by foreign directors such as Godard and Bergman and his filmmaking style has reflected that. He has always written adult scripts with high-brow dialogue and an old fashioned sense of narrative. And we as an audience were always willing to accept this all the way through his 1980's work. But once we got to the 90's audience patience for Allen's sense of comedy and the way he wanted to tell a story began to wane. Now in the 2000's we have almost no patience for it at all. We are so used to high concept, little substance Hollywood types of films that we cannot even begin to comprehend a film that relies so much on people simply talking. And there is a lot of dialogue in most of Allen's films. Allen matured as a filmmaker throughout the 70's and 80's, but once he hit the 90's he found his style and voice and he hasn't deterred from it's since and we have grown tired of it. But Allen's filmmaking is so pure and simple it reminds one of how movies used to be made and what movies used to be about - story and character. We as moviegoers have largely forgotten about these two things instead focusing on flashy camera moves, big special effects, sex and violence to carry us through. I'm not defending all of Allen's films, but if you look at his filmography of late I would say his work in the 2000's is on par with what he did in the 90's. Think about it, in the 90's he gave us Bullets Over Broadway and Husbands and Wives. Two of his best films. He also gave us Manhattan Murder Mystery and Mighty Aphrodite, which is on par with Small Time Crooks and Hollywood Ending form this decade. Critics tend to be unfairly cruel to Allen when he makes a movie these days. But he makes one film a year and sometimes even two. Not all of them are going to be masterpieces... but look at the masterpieces he has given us - Annie Hall, Manhattan, Broadway Danny Rose, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Bullets Over Broadway, and Husbands and Wives. Now look at the GREAT movies he has given us - Sleeper, Interiors, Zelig, Radio Days, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Deconstructing Harry, Sweet and Lowdown, Match Point and now Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Any director would kill to have that many good films in his/her filmography. So in short, lay off Woody Allen people. The man deserves respect as an artist. And go see Vicky Cristina Barcelona. One of the best films of the year.
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