Let’s get this out of the way: Woody Allen the man is a creep who deserves scorn and dismissal. But Woody Allen the filmmaker made reliably engaging movies for many years, and some of them reward revisiting, if only to lament the treasure that he stole from us by trashing his own reputation. One of his most unusual and fascinating films is 2008’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, part of a series of pictures he made in Europe in a bit of a late-career renaissance. Many of the Allen hallmarks are here: affluent characters chattering about their neuroses, snappy dialogue, dinner table moments filmed with the intimacy and lushness that other directors reserve for love scenes. The missing element is Manhattan; instead, we get a tourist’s-eye view of Barcelona and all the pleasures and wonders that are available to the moneyed bourgeoisie that occupy the core of Allen’s story.
Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) are best friends spending the summer in Barcelona before Vicky’s upcoming wedding to a stable, wealthy businessman, Doug (Chris Messina). Voice-over narration sketches in character traits clearly perceptible in the actors’ performances: Vicky is cautious and reserved; Cristina is curious and wild. When the women meet a dashing painter, Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), the pieces are in place for a love triangle that promises to upend their lives. Juan Antonio, with perfect politeness and a smoldering affect, invites both of them to accompany him in his private plane to Oviedo for a weekend of art, food and sex. Shocked by the directness of his approach, the women are flattered and offended and intrigued, and you can see their reflexive reactions in their faces even before they say anything out loud: Vicky’s no, and Cristina’s yes.
Complications and reversals ensue in Allen’s script, and much of the pleasure of the film lies in watching these actors both fulfill and betray their characters’ essential natures. Giving in to Juan Antonio’s seductions, Vicky finds herself teetering on the edge of crisis, pushed further by every passionless phone conversation with her fiancé. We anticipate a story arc where Vicky transforms into a more Cristina-like spirit, shedding her stable persona and opening up to a life of passion and art — but that’s not where the story is going. Enter the wild card element, in the form of Maria Elena (Penélope Cruz), Juan Antonio’s volatile ex-wife. Their marriage dissolved amid rumors of gunfire and turmoil, and it’s clear that there’s still a whirlwind of emotion between them, even with Vicky and Cristina in the mix.
Cruz and Bardem, who married in real life following this production, display explosive chemistry. Large portions of their dialogue are apparently unscripted improvisations in Spanish as they bicker, cajole and explode before careening back into tenderness and intimacy. On the surface, their characters read as stereotypes of fiery Spaniards pulled straight from a white man’s typewriter, yet the sharpness of the performances (Cruz’s won her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress) transforms what could be caricature into something elemental. These are two people, both abstract painters, whose love for one another is toxic but undying. The depth of that passion sidelines both Cristina’s taste for fun and Vicky’s flirtation with new love. The expected story arc is bent in an entirely new direction, resulting in a return to the status quo for each of the eponymous characters.
The title itself seems to reflect the essential fragmented nature of the story: two women and a city, with no connective conjunction. The real story is an unknowable tangle beyond the comprehension of the primary characters and perhaps even the filmmaker. Allen exoticizes Spain while seeming to acknowledge his own limitations and myopia. The closing voice-over establishes Vicky’s return to stability and Cristina’s continuing hunger for trying anything, neither of them changed from the first scene despite the emotional wringer they’ve both been through. That’s an interesting idea in itself, a repudiation of the trope that characters must transform over the course of a story. Maybe we’re just who we are, and nothing that happens in life is going to change our fundamental nature.
This raises the question: Is this story Allen’s way of copping to his own fundamental nature? In an early scene when Juan Antonio introduces the women to his father, Julio (Josep Maria Domènech), he explains that the old man is a poet who is so angry at the world that he refuses to publish his poems in order to withhold beauty from those who don’t deserve it. Allen, after the collapse of critical regard and audience engagement following well-documented allegations of sexual harassment and child abuse, may now be feeling like Julio, refusing to make new films for a world which no longer appreciates him. However, it turns out that he’s continuing to make movies, including one this year, but without the distribution he previously enjoyed or the A-list actors who used to line up to work with him. While Allen was once a driver of the cinematic zeitgeist, there’s little reason to pay any attention to what he’s doing now. His bad behavior eclipsed his own legacy, but Vicky Cristina Barcelona is worth revisiting as a way to appreciate the filmmaker he used to be without ever having to buy another ticket for his films.
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