Threesome's company
Jan. 2 — Received offer to write and direct film in Barcelona. Must be cautious. Spain is sunny, and I freckle. Money not great either, but agent did manage to get me a 10th of 1 percent of anything the picture does over $400 million after break even.
June 1 — Arrived Barcelona. Accommodations first class. Hotel has been promised half star next year provided they install running water.
Aug. 3— I suppose it comes with the territory. As director, one is part teacher, part shrink, part father figure, guru. Is it any wonder, then, that as the weeks have passed, Scarlett and Penelope have both developed crushes on me? The fragile female heart. I notice poor Javier looking on as the actresses bed me with their eyes, but I’ve explained to the boy that unbridled feminine desire for a cinema icon, particularly one who wears a sneer of cold command, is to be expected…
Back in August, Woody Allen wrote a piece for the International Herald Tribune to promote his upcoming movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Called “Dear Spanish diary… Love, Woody,” it was easily the funniest thing Allen has dashed off in years, much funnier than his last eight or so movies. But with a cast that includes Javier Bardem and noted sex bombs Scarlett Johannson and Penelope Cruz (plus the less-explosive but still skillful Rebecca Hall), Vicky Cristina Barcelona can’t miss at being diverting, and at least very entertaining.
My theory on Woody Allen’s renaissance is that he is sick of New York City. His beloved Manhattan has become barren to him since 9/11. Some emotional core has been ripped out for him, resulting in anemic films like Anything Else (with Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci) and Melinda and Melinda (with Will Farrell).
He’d done some pretty unfunny films before 9/11, like The Curse of the Black Scorpion, and one underrated comic gem, Hollywood Ending, after 9/11; but it wasn’t until Allen pulled up his roots and relocated to England to make Match Point that people started talking “renaissance.” Of course, the following two films set in England — Scoop and Cassandra’s Dream — were no masterpieces, but the director seemed rejuvenated, not least by his bouncy new blonde star, Johansson.
The wandering director sets his latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (note the absence of commas), in the title city, allowing his camera to linger lovingly over the city’s Gaudí-created locales, as well as his two imports, Johannson and Hall. No exaggeration to say that Allen treats his two young starlets to as many dewy, jaw-dropping close-ups as he does the Sagrada Familia. This is one of the not-so-secret ingredients to Allen’s creative rebirth, and he knows it: by enlisting hot young actresses to lure moviegoers, and by surrendering his “leading man” duties to a series of younger stand-ins (some successful, some not, including everyone from John Cusack to Kenneth Branagh), Allen’s actually been freer to develop more interesting characters, ones not pinioned by his kvetching, over-analytical New Yorker persona. (For the record, Rebecca Hall’s conflicted Vicky character gets all the typical, neurotic-Woody Allen lines here.)
Poking around Europe (maybe Vicky Cristina Barcelona is part of a Spanish trilogy?) has freed up Allen’s writing pen. Though not exactly a laugh-out-loud comedy, his latest balances the Chekhov/Bergman character studies of earlier “serious” films (Interiors, Crime and Punishment) with the kind of sex farce he whips up in, oh, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy or Broadway Danny Rose.
New Yorkers Vicky and Cristina (you may get confused over which is which for a few minutes) are enjoying a holiday in Barcelona when they’re approached at their dinner table by the bedroom eyes of 40-something painter Juan Antonio Gonzalo (Javier Bardem), who invites them to fly on his private plane that night to Oviedo: “We will drink some wonderful wines, we will make love…”
His European openness initially attracts Cristina (Scarlett, in full-blown sex goddess mode), who drags along Vicky as moral support. But a bad oyster causes Cristina to get sick and miss the sightseeing; Vicky and Antonio instead have a moment together, and…
Allen’s script takes this familiar scenario into some unfamiliar areas, but it’s the arrival of wild card Penelope Cruz as the mentally unbalanced ex-wife María Elena that really kicks this party into high gear. As the two Spanish actors spar off, it’s clear that Bardem and Cruz are playing their parts as high melodrama — something closer to Pedro Almodovar than Woody Allen. They’re great fun to watch, even while Johansson and Hall are left standing on the sidelines with blank, open-mouthed expressions.
And, oh yes, the septagenerian Allen gets to play out quite a few male fantasies here (and maybe a couple female ones, too): you’ve got your casual one-on-one coupling, your girl-on-girl, your threesome action. It’s like Mr. Allen has picked up a subscription to FHM or has been reading back issues of Penthouse Forum for material. But, as his self-deprecating essay in the Tribune makes clear, Allen doesn’t see himself as a player in all this youthful frolicking; he’s just sort of, well, voyeuristically cataloguing it all. But not in a creepy way. And this is the stuff that puts butts in movie seats: as of this writing, Vicky Cristina Barcelona has earned $28 million — a blockbuster by Woody Allen standards.
(One thing the film could do without is the voiceover narration. Allen’s used this device successfully in the past, but here it seems to get in the way of storytelling, which after all should tell us things through action, not wordy narration on people’s inner motivations and hang-ups. Plus, there should be a rule about voiceover narrations: no one under age 40 is allowed to do them, unless it’s a children’s movie. Exposition seriously lacks credibility when voiced by a 20-something actor such as Christopher Evan Welch, who is used here. But I suppose Alec Baldwin was busy or charges too much.)
Sure, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is still Woody Allen Lite, but that’s not a bad thing at all, after having served up ponderous stuff like Another Woman and Shadows and Fog in the past. Europe agrees with this director, and it’s enjoyable to see Allen back in some sort of decent form. Having embraced Johannson as part muse, part lucky charm (she’s been in three of his last four movies, though her acting ain’t exactly stellar), he’s running this streak of arty, Europe-flavored films for what it’s worth. Yeah. Maybe the confines of 110th Street and Tribeca have worn out their welcome. It’s probably the proper time for Allen to embrace Europe, and let Europe embrace him for a while.
