Woody Penelope Barcelona

In theaters Wednesday: Traitor
In theaters Friday: Babylon A.D., College, Disaster Movie

New on DVD: Redbelt, What Happens in Vegas, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?

My favorite bit of Woody Allen’s is when he says he was once visited by little green men from outer space and the first thing they said to him is that they much prefer his earlier, funnier films. That gets me every time because it’s the perfect analogy for Allen’s trademark neuroses and self-absorption, and because I sort of think the aliens have a point. Most of the writer/director’s best work is funny. When he ventures too far into drama, he’s really rolling the dice. And with Vicky Christina Barcelona, he eschews comedy for the most part in favor of a kind of wistful romantic drama in the vein of famous Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, whose last U.S.-distributed film Volver also featured Penelope Cruz, but more on her later.

The two titular characters, Vicky and Christina, are mid-20s gal pals from New York City summering in Barcelona. The studious one is Vicky, and Rebecca Hall gives her a tender, practical reading which makes her the most relatable character in the film, even if some of her rants make her sound like a Woody Allen hand-puppet. Vicky is in Barcelona to study Catalan culture for her masters, while her free-spirited friend, Christina, simply wants adventure, daring, and maybe a little affair or two. Scarlett Johanssen plays Christina as a little rebel lost which is exhilarating at the outset but grows tiresome in its predictability by the second act. The plot takes off when the girls are propositioned by Juan Antonio, a mysterious artist played by Oscar-winner Javier Bardem with just enough charm and depth to keep the ick factor of his bohemian lifestyle at bay. Vicky and Christina cavort around the city with the artist and each falls for him in her own way. Straight-laced Vicky is engaged to a yuppie back in Manhattan, so her feelings for Juan Antonio produce guilt and confusion. Conversely, Christina lives with no regrets. And then it happens. Bardem’s ex-wife, a volatile soul who once tried to kill him in a passionate fury, knifes this intriguing love triangle like she knifed him years before.

Cruz’s entrance as the ex-wife, Maria Elena, is brilliant. It saves the movie from being just a pleasant diversion. It’s almost as if Allen was meandering around a breezy, but conventional summer-in-Spain story when he struck on the idea of throwing a firecracker into the pot with the hysterical, unpredictable and open-mouthed Maria Elena. Cruz never rests on screen. She only smolders or explodes, it’s a wonder and a shame that Allen didn’t cast off the rest of the ho-hum script and rewrite a film based completely on the tempestuous marriage Cruz and Bardem’s characters once suffered through. That would have been something to see.

Still, it’s a Woody Allen movie through and through. The split-screen, the detached voice-over narration, the nervy, Id-revealing speeches are all there for better or worse. I only wish he would have figured out how to end this movie. And maybe if he had excised the Vicky and Christina portions, and focused on Bardem and Cruz (why not Antionio Maria Barcelona?), a sufficient ending would have revealed itself. As it is, Vicky Christina Barcelona has a few wonderful moments of dialogue and cinematography, two fantastic performances—Hall and Cruz—and two decent ones—Bardem, Johanssen—but not enough to make it essential viewing for anyone other than Allen aficionados. For everyone else, Cruz’s wrecking ball of a woman is the only highlight you’re likely to fall too hard for.

Speaking of Allen, I don’t know how you make the short film anthology New York, I Love You without him (or Scorsese, for that matter), but here’s the teaser trailer for the film out in February. So we don’t get Woody, but his frequent star Scarlett Johansson does make her directorial debut, so there you go.