Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

The most dispiriting prospect of an “off” Woody Allen film are the scenes that actually work - that periodically break free of the filmmaker’s rigged, by-now-far-beyond-predictable worldview and show us what could have been, if only Allen could surrender to his gifts as he once did with greater frequency. Anything Else is possibly my least favorite Woody Allen picture, but I still remember that scene of Allen busting up that car – a random burst of desperate anger that only accentuated his impotence. Melinda and Melinda failed to come to life because Allen’s characters aren’t characters anymore; they’re placeholders - speaking in a stilted, amateurishly expository dramatic short-hand that critics wouldn’t tolerate of lesser directors. There’s no end to this dialogue in Allen’s newer pictures, the characters just keep talk, talk, talking - telling us how we’re supposed to react to scenes so divorced from actual human behavior they would baffle us otherwise. As tiresome as Melinda and Melinda was though, it also had a moment – between Chloë Sevigny and Chiwetel Ejiofor in a café – that pushes through the material and registers. Sevigny and Ejiofor are intense, erotic actors, and, discovering a mutual longing in one another, they conjure the old push-pull that used to be so vivid in Allen’s pictures.

What was once dramatic integrity (it was surprising, and necessary, to see Annie and Alvy fall apart for keeps) has become stubbornness – a curmudgeon’s refusal to shake free from an unnaturally dour outlook that’s as false as most romantic comedies, only in the opposite direction. The charge that we used to feel from watching a Woody Allen movie is that charge that comes from following any of our great film artists: watching a filmmaker, within the traditional constrictions of a film, wrestle with his obsessions, and try to resolve and explain them in ways that other people will understand and, even more daunting, enjoy. The problem with modern Woody Allen pictures is that the wrestling has ended, and the inner ghouls have won – Allen isn’t second-guessing or fighting himself anymore – he’s a scold who’s allowed his pictures to become repetitive and predictable – selling the same two or three pet themes over and over. The beautiful second chance that closed Hannah and Her Sisters worked so well because we could sense that Allen was as surprised by that ending as we were; but allowed it anyway.

A closed-off, nagging quality has been threatening to strangle Allen’s pictures for awhile, but he’s been able to get by with it, off and on, because he’s been dressing this cynicism up in thriller’s clothing – a genre where fatalism has a bit more novelty, particularly when stacked next to most mainstream thrillers, which nearly always pull their punches. In a romantic comedy though, which Allen hasn’t attempted straight-out in a while, the flat characters and skewed, redundant worldview stick out – we see the scenes missing their marks because Allen can’t sell us on their nonsense. Allen’s new picture, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is meant to be a sensual romantic-comic roundelay – the sort of picture that needs a reckless sense of play and timing and heat. But Allen is either resisting or suffering from bad instincts – the most galling being a narrator who addresses the moments that unfold off-screen; which, perversely, sound far more interesting than the moments we’re actually watching (we’re treated to the scenes most directors would cut, and denied the scenes most directors would cut to). Allen uses a narrator to drain his romantic comedy of romance and comedy - leaving us with neat, crisp, “written” scenes that have no mess or subtext. Vicky Cristina Barcelona has the same depressing asexual quality that characterized Robert Benton’s Feast of Love last year, but you could sort of pity that picture – it seemed to be trying at least, to be reaching but succumbing to a this-how-the-world-should-work naiveté. And if Vicky Cristina Barcelona was a failure, it would be forgivable, but this is obviously the film that Woody Allen sought to make, and has been making, and will most likely continue to make. Dianne Wiest could never conceive on this Woody Allen’s watch. Hell, Dianne Weist would never exist on this Woody Allen’s watch.

What’s the point of a romantic comedy without lust, fluid, food, life? What’s the point of approaching Vicky Cristina Barcelona in this manner? Like all Woody Allen movies, there are moments in Vicky Cristina Barcelona that click - where the actors breathe into the material. Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem are wonderful together, suggesting an interior dimension, history and hunger. They’re both clichés: full-blooded, crazed artists who embrace the passion that few others have the bravery to endure, but they’re at least vital clichés. Rebecca Hall, who had a sweet, lost quality in The Prestige, is initially pitifully underwritten here; she’s playing the neurotic who’s closed-off from pleasure – but she thaws convincingly, and there’s a pre-coital moment between her and a new lover that’s authentically moving. Hall recalls Mia Farrow; they’re both beautiful in a brainy, caged, way – you see the vulnerability and the self-doubt and the tug-of-war. Allen didn’t feel Rebecca Hall’s character while writing it – it’s vaudeville by now – but Rebecca Hall somehow feels Rebecca Hall’s character. Sadly though, there’s waste – a suggestion of an inspired idea that’s never allowed to bloom - that Hall’s tryst with an outsider improves her sexual relationship with her fiancé.

Scarlett Johansson isn’t much here, just as she wasn’t much in the second half of Match Point (she was charming in Scoop) but she shouldn’t be blamed. Johansson has been written here as a schematic contrast to the more important Rebecca Hall character; and she’s saddled with a variety of actions that have no believable function, especially her decision near the end, which happens for no reason beyond Allen’s usual chickening out. There’s waste to the Johansson character too, she’s shockingly bare when she’s confessing what she perceives as a lack of talent; and her arc has promising farcical implications: an insecure wannabe wild-child settles into a three-way sexual-royale where she becomes, by default, the straight one; but Allen drops that too – the messiness scares him, threatens what he obviously considers art, by now, to be – tidy and worked out, with obvious symmetry.

The theatre playing Vicky Cristina Barcelona was packed, primarily with elderly people, and they seemed to appreciate the polite pointlessness of it all – it’s sex and ache as tapioca, something to soothe and digest before driving home to 60 Minutes. Great Allen isn’t this comfortable and forgettable; it’s idiosyncratic, irritating, uneven, personal, unapologetic, apologetic, speculative, moving – it sticks. Some may claim me harsh and ungrateful; and, truthfully, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is an adequate film, not an awful one. But I believe in extending one of our great film artists more respect. I won’t offer Allen his gold watch and congratulate him for mediocrity because I refuse to count him out.

Posted on August 19th, 2008 in Reviews, Comedy, 2008 |

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