Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Woody Allen’s Confident Minor Masterpiece

Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona runs 96 minutes and spends nearly all of them with people who cannot decide what they want. That indecision is the movie’s engine, its joke and, in the end, its limit. The film premiered at Cannes on May 17, 2008, reached U.S. theaters on August 15 through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and The Weinstein Company, and landed in Spain on September 19, 2008 via Warner Bros. Pictures. It grossed $96 million against a $15 million budget, one of his highest-grossing films.

Trailer, via Woody Allen.

Two Americans and a Painter in Barcelona

The setup is clean. Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) spend a summer in Barcelona with Vicky’s distant relative Judy Nash (Patricia Clarkson) and Judy’s husband Mark (Kevin Dunn). Vicky is practical, traditional, engaged to the reliable Doug (Chris Messina). Cristina calls herself a nonconformist, spontaneous, and has no idea what she wants from life or love.

At an art exhibition, Cristina notices the painter Juan Antonio Gonzalo (Javier Bardem). Judy tells her he had a violent relationship with his ex-wife. Then he walks up and invites both women to fly with him to Oviedo for the weekend — sightseeing, fine dining, drinking, and, he makes clear, sex with both of them. He pilots the small plane himself.

The Weekend That Flips the Film

Cristina says yes almost immediately. Vicky is unimpressed and reluctant, then goes anyway, mainly to watch over her friend. On the first night Vicky refuses his hotel-room invitation, citing Doug. Cristina accepts — and then comes down with food poisoning before anything happens.

That illness is the hinge the whole movie turns on. Vicky and Juan Antonio spend the weekend alone while Cristina recovers in bed. He talks about María Elena (Penélope Cruz), the ex-wife. Vicky’s opinion of him shifts. They visit his father, an old poet. That evening a Spanish guitar performance moves her deeply. Walking through a grove of trees in the dark, she finally consents.

The next day Cristina feels better and the three of them fly back to Barcelona. So the woman who wanted commitment sleeps with the painter, and the woman who wanted adventure spends the weekend vomiting. Allen builds the film on that inversion, and it is the sharpest thing in the script.

Cruz Takes Over the Last Act

María Elena re-enters the picture, and Cruz walks off with it. The character is described as mentally and emotionally unstable, and Cruz plays her at full volume — no vanity, no smoothing. It is the performance the film is remembered for. She won the Academy Award, the BAFTA Award and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actress, and picked up SAG, Golden Globe and Critics Choice nominations in the same category.

At the 66th Golden Globe Awards the film took four nominations, including Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for Bardem.

Bardem is the other reason this works. Juan Antonio could be a creep and nothing more. Bardem plays him as calm and entirely without shame, which is funnier and more unsettling than aggression would be. Hall carries the harder role — Vicky is the one who changes, and Hall makes that change feel gradual rather than written.

Barcelona, Avilés and Oviedo

This was Allen’s fourth consecutive film shot outside the United States. Production took place in Barcelona, Avilés and Oviedo. The Spanish locations are not decoration; the film treats the country as a place where its American characters briefly behave unlike themselves. The narrator (Christopher Evan Welch) holds the whole thing at arm’s length, telling us what happens rather than letting us discover it.

That narration is a much-argued-over choice. It keeps the tone light and keeps the melodrama from tipping into something heavier. It also keeps the audience from getting too close to anyone. Both effects are deliberate. Only one of them is a virtue.

Release Schedule

The tagline is “Life is the ultimate work of art.” The film does not quite earn it. What it earns is something smaller: a summer abroad that leaves everyone roughly where they started.

What Allen Gets Right and What He Skips

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a romantic comedy drama that is funnier than it is romantic and smarter than it is deep. The plot stays open-ended — the film declines to say what any of them learned, and that refusal is the point. Allen’s script is efficient at 96 minutes, and the Oviedo weekend is a well-built piece of writing: one illness, one guitar performance, one walk through the trees, and the whole arrangement of the film flips.

The weakness is Vicky. She is the character with the most at stake, and the film is less interested in her than in the idea of her. Cristina’s restlessness gets the screen time; María Elena gets the fireworks. Vicky’s engagement to Doug, the thing that should make her weekend in Oviedo cost something, mostly just sits there.

So the praise for Cruz is deserved but it has crowded out how much of this movie rests on Bardem and Hall. Cruz’s role is smaller than her reputation for it suggests. What she does in that time is real, but the film’s best sustained work is Bardem’s refusal to play Juan Antonio as a villain and Hall’s slow, quiet surrender of her own rules.

Worth your time. It is minor Allen, but it is confident minor Allen, and the Spanish setting suits him. The narration is a crutch. The performances are not.

7.0 of 10.

2008 Film · Javier Bardem · movie review · Penelope Cruz · Vicky Cristina Barcelona · Woody Allen