C+ Movie Review
Review by Alice Graves
I used to think that Woody Allen could do no wrong. When I lived in New York I went to see each new movie on opening night. I stood out in the freezing rain to see "Hannah and Her Sisters" but it was worth it. I came away from that movie renewed, inspired, and optimistic about the possibilities of love and life. It was his most uncynical film.
Allen's early films were howlers aimed at a college-educated (preferably in comparative literature), urban audience. Like "Love and Death," his hysterical historical movie about a plot to assassinate Napoleon with references to philosophy, literature and the Marx Brothers. Thirty-three years later, it is a classic.
I even liked "Hollywood Ending," his own Hollywood ending of sorts. In it he conjured Sophocles by creating the role of the film director who becomes hysterically blind and can't see the movie he is making. It's hilarious but it has essence. It has something to tell the audience. The movies coming out of Hollywood are not worth seeing. In the end, the Allen character moves to Paris, where his work (like that of Jerry Lewis) is appreciated.
Allen made two more films in the US before leaving for London, where he made Hitchcockian thrillers "Match Point" and "Cassandra's Dream," with "Scoop" thrown in the middle for a comic breather.
And then on to the Continent.
As much as I hate to say this, I was disappointed in "Vicky Christina Barcelona." I loved the city of Barcelona used as a backdrop. I am ready to move there. But the characters were shallow and the story was murky. The character with the most depth, who we barely saw enough of, was the American expatriate Judy, played by Patricia Clarkson. She is simply unforgettable as a woman who knows the score, and her scenes made the movie worth seeing. Scarlett Johansson is beautiful to look at, as are Javier Bardem, Rebecca Hall and Penelope Cruz, but their characters were all one-dimensional.
Maybe Allen is trying to tell us that Americans are gullible and know nothing about love. But Bardem and Cruz, so passionately and violently in love, are not convincing either. Yes, their love inspires them to create art, but is art love or is it merely art?
Allen is brilliant at making his locations a character in his films, and his actors are lovely to look at. I even thought Bardem was sort of cute as the psycho killer in "No Country for Old Men," but I'll take that one up with my shrink.
If you're wavering on whether or not to see "Vicky Christina Barcelona," I say see it, because it's Woody Allen which makes it better than most of the tripe on multiplex screens these days. But don't expect the Woody Allen who made "Annie Hall" or "Take the Money and Run" and don't expect to roll in the aisles howling with laughter, your giant cola spurting through your nostrils. Woody Allen, like a fine wine, has mellowed. Just inhale and sip.
