Vicky Christina Barcelona (12A.)
Directed by Woody Allen.
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Patricia Clarkson. 96 mins.
It seems to me that Woody Allen gets the kind of kid-glove treatment from the media that right wing Republicans complain Barack Obama received during the election. I saw this the night after it had won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy and though the audience laughed no more than six times in total each time they seized gratefully upon any opportunity to show their appreciation.
This is yet another Woody Allen “return to form” that only emphasises how far he has fallen and how far people are in denial of it. It’s an improvement over Cassandra’s Dream only in as much as it’s lighter and slightly shorter. Two young American girls (Johansson and Hall) decide to spend their summer in Barcelona and get mixed up with a brooding, abrupt painter (Bardem) and then his crazy but oh-so-talented ex-wife (Cruz.)
This is the fourth installment of Woody Allen’s European Vacation and his Barcelona doesn’t get beyond the places you visited on holiday there. But that tourist guide view of the city matches the film’s tourist guide insight into relationships – it offers a few obvious snapshots of points everybody is already familiar with.
The most depressing thing is that you begin to doubt if his films were ever that good. What we once perceived as satirical digs at the neurotic New York liberal elite now pass as straight dialogue.
The performers though are not to blame. Hall and Bardem have the rare gift of taking his dialogue and situations and making them seem like something a real human being might say or experience. Cruz has the benefit of having lots of dialogue in Spanish; Allen’s dialogue isn’t nearly so clunky in subtitles. Her role is a simplistic, hot headed Mediterranean caricature; it’s almost like Sophia Loren playing the Hattie Jacques role in Carry on Abroad, giving a seductive lilt to the line, “It’s the blooding stove, there’s no blooding food and no blooding staff.”
Directed by Woody Allen.
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Patricia Clarkson. 96 mins.
It seems to me that Woody Allen gets the kind of kid-glove treatment from the media that right wing Republicans complain Barack Obama received during the election. I saw this the night after it had won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy and though the audience laughed no more than six times in total each time they seized gratefully upon any opportunity to show their appreciation.
This is yet another Woody Allen “return to form” that only emphasises how far he has fallen and how far people are in denial of it. It’s an improvement over Cassandra’s Dream only in as much as it’s lighter and slightly shorter. Two young American girls (Johansson and Hall) decide to spend their summer in Barcelona and get mixed up with a brooding, abrupt painter (Bardem) and then his crazy but oh-so-talented ex-wife (Cruz.)
This is the fourth installment of Woody Allen’s European Vacation and his Barcelona doesn’t get beyond the places you visited on holiday there. But that tourist guide view of the city matches the film’s tourist guide insight into relationships – it offers a few obvious snapshots of points everybody is already familiar with.
The most depressing thing is that you begin to doubt if his films were ever that good. What we once perceived as satirical digs at the neurotic New York liberal elite now pass as straight dialogue.
The performers though are not to blame. Hall and Bardem have the rare gift of taking his dialogue and situations and making them seem like something a real human being might say or experience. Cruz has the benefit of having lots of dialogue in Spanish; Allen’s dialogue isn’t nearly so clunky in subtitles. Her role is a simplistic, hot headed Mediterranean caricature; it’s almost like Sophia Loren playing the Hattie Jacques role in Carry on Abroad, giving a seductive lilt to the line, “It’s the blooding stove, there’s no blooding food and no blooding staff.”
