Movie of the Week#4: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Woody Allen

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Spain/USA, 2008). Directed and wrote by Woody Allen. Cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe. Film editing: Alisa Lepselter. Production Design by Alain Brainée & Iñigo Navarro. Costume Design by Sonia Grande. Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Patricia Clarkson, Chris Messina, Kevin Dunn, Pablo Schreiber.

         Vicky (Hall) and Cristina (Johansson) are two Americans who decide to spend a summer in Barcelona at the home of a friend of their family, Judy Nash (Clarkson). Vicky is engaged to Doug (Messina), while Cristina shows more interest in living a loving relationship. The possibility arises when she flirts with the artist Juan Antonio (Bardem), who boldly invites the two to a visit to Oviedo in his private jet. Vicky is reluctant, but Cristina agrees. He invites them both to sleep with him, but only Cristina gets excited. She is not well, and it is Vicky who gives in to the charms of Juan Antonio. Vicky is now unenthusiastic and confident in her relationship with Doug, who decides to meet her in Barcelona to get married. Cristina is going to live with Juan Antonio. Both have a relatively quiet life until the arrival of Juan Antonio's ex-wife, Maria Elena (Cruz). Possessive and moody, Maria Elena becomes the third element of a love triangle, where Cristina becomes an obstacle so that the extremely passionate relationship between the couple becomes more civilized. Judy notices in the warm relationship between Vicky and her husband a close picture of their own marriage. Cristina cannot carry on the relationship to three. It's Vicky's chance to decide between the lukewarm relationship with Doug or push her attraction to Juan Antonio. But before she decides something, an unexpected event virtually decides for her the direction of events.

        Allen conducts his fable (at certain points illustrating moral conflicts similar to those experienced by the characters in Rohmer's films) by counteracting the pleasure of living associated with greater emotional instability and, on the other hand, the security of a relationship, but devoid of that touch of malice. And he leads the narrative with a hedonism in its exposition similar to that of the artist lived by Bardem. Even if hurried readings suggest a rapprochement with Almodóvar, and Cruz's character certainly is an obvious allusion to the Spanish filmmaker's universe, which domains is a typical visual style of Allen in his European phase, such as meticulous camerawork and moral dramas experienced by their Anglo-Saxon protagonists, more precisely Vicky, serving as counterpoint to the Latin seasoning that has its facet evidently comical in the figure of Cross. Nothing that, in old times, Hollywood no longer effected explicitly caricature in the films with Carmen Miranda. Exoticism here, less the creation of the studios than the real scenes of a Barcelona full of works by Gaudí and guitarists, seems to justify a certain tone by a postcard of invitation to tourism (in fact a good part of the budget of the production was banked with the financing of the Hispanic government ). Such motives, from a Hitchcockian perspective, had already been filmed by Antonioni in his The Passenger . As in Rohmer , the characters most seemingly confident in their own certainties are that they end up being less successful. Although Allen is far from being as concise as the French filmmaker in both stylistic and narrative terms, always surrounding his characters' love conflicts for a number of overly explicit situations, such as the mirroring relationship between Judy and Vicky, the most interesting interpretations of the film are those experienced by Clarkson and the relatively unknown Hall respectively. Or even including frankly unnecessary characters, like that of Juan Antonio's father, who seems more like contractual agreements to mandatory cast quotas in co-productions. Cyclical as Match Point, perhaps his greatest virtue is to return to the two protagonists with the same anxieties that accompanied them on arrival in Spain. The story has a luxurious aid from an internal narrator, subtly ironic in its gravity. A short excerpt from Hitchcock's  Shadow of a Doubt (1943) comes as a gift. Featuring the scene in the private jet in which Johansson embodies the neurotic tone and verbal incontinence of the characters lived by Allen himself in his films. Just as for the moment in which the usual use of the shot / counter-shot of a couple in a romantic moment yields place to dissolutions of the image. Although the result is interesting, it sounds somewhat gratuitous inside the body of the film.The initial credits, a trademark of his films, with the usual white type on black background, are accompanied here not of jazz but of themes to the guitar of celebrated Spanish composers like Paco de Lucía, that incidentally follow the whole track of the film. Mediapro / Gravier Prod./Antena 3 Film / Antenna 3 Television for MGM. 96 minutes.

Postado originalmente em português em 23/08/2015