Saturday, August 16, 2008

Adrift in Barcelona

by Ari

Woody Allen followed his return to glory, Match Point, with the diverting but mostly unsuccessful 2006 comedy, Scoop, and another bleak, tragic, but unbalanced thriller, Cassandra's Dream, earlier this year. Now, only a few months later, Allen is back with an intriguing blend of laughs and seriousness in the form of the sensual, romantic Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The film stars Rebecca Hall and Scarlet Johansson as Vicky and Cristina, beautiful young American "best friends" who spend the summer in Barcelona before returning to their uncertain future at home.

For Vicky, the summer escape seems like a pleasant two months for relaxation and study before she marries a confident, anti-artistic, all-American businessman named Doug (a pitch-perfect performance Chris Messina). At one point when Doug arrives to Barcelona for an early wedding with his lover, he views an abstract painting and sarcastically mocks it as "a Rorschach blot!". But he seems like a good guy and has his charms, a secure choice for the tempered, restrained Vicky. On the other hand, Cristina is a struggling actress (essentially the same role for Johansson from Match Point) with a taste for unpredictable sexual encounters. She's free-spirited and open to new experiences, a method for handling the several insecurities boiling under the surface. She's the Allen neouritic played particularly well by a strikingly beautiful young actress.

There's no question Allen is inspired by Johansson's sexual allure - he holds prolonged close-ups of her face in key dramatic sequences and profiles her singular figure with sensual grace. When the women meet a passionate, romantic painter Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), the situation in Barcelona takes a few unexpected turns. Cristina finds what she wants until Antonio's fiery, potentially dangerous ex-wife, Maria (Penelope Cruz at her finest) arrives at her old home, and from there a triangular love affair ensues that inspires sex, art and good times. But mostly sex. The problem is that Vicky, on a weekend alone with Antonio, is seduced by his bohemian, spirited nature and falls in love. What type of affection is difficult to pin down, though, and it leads Vicky through a summer of confusion and lies.

Hall conveys her bottled-up conflict with subtle glances and nervous body language, a remarkable performance of quiet devastation. This is old Woody Allen in the sense that it explores behavior before plot, a quality that underlines his skill for writing awkward, funny, human interaction. Bardem's Juan Antonio provokes women without guilt, a man unable to function without a witness to his impulses. His clashes with Cruz are some of the film's most gripping moments. Vicky Cristina Barcelona is also clearly inspired by the warm foreign setting Allen places his characters. The tone of the cinematography makes it seem like the entire film was shot at that magical hour right before sundown. The romantic imagery creates one of Allen's most atmospheric works. In a brilliant display of direction and editing, Allen uses cool dissolves to transition between Vicky and Juan Antonio at a crucial seduction. It's the type of filmmaking that reminds the viewer that a master is behind the camera.

I felt this way through much of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, another late career highmark for one of the great voices in American film.