Movie Review: Woody Allen Puts Together a Hot Foursome in Vicky Christina Barcelona

Another year another movie from the Woodman. Even the prospect of another delightful performance by Scarlett Johansson is hardly enough to fight the built-in ennui at the thought of another Woody Allen flick. Indeed the movie doesn't start promisingly. A narrator (not Allen) immediatly begins sketching in the background of Johansson (delectable as always) as Christina and gawkily pretty Rebecca Hall as Vicky who have just arrived in - you guessed it - Barcelona.

Hall gets stuck with a lot of the most typically Woody neurotic dialogue and at first she seems to struggle with it as many actors have before her. Yet she finds her way through it and builds a charcter of her own, her wide expressive mouth telling you as much about what she's feeling as her eyes.

Then in rolls Anton Chigurrh or rather, Javier Bardem, with sex appeal and charisma to burn. With smoldering eyes he purringly asks the girls to join him for a weekend of living - sex, wine, an airplane ride - and the movie takes off.

You see the engaged Vicky is the proverbial uptight good girl who sees love as security whereas Christina is the wannabe free spirit who is always seeking a transcendant love and never finding it. Bardem is the sexy artist who shakes them and the movie up and then Allen pulls one last trump card - the spectacular Penelope Cruz as Bardem's crazy ex/muse. She very nearly hijacks the rest of the film.

Allen and his cinematographer Javier Aguireesarobe show Spain in it's best light. Just about every Allen movie functions as architecture porn and this one is no different, feasting on fantastic country villas, Gaudi creations, and vintage amusement parks.

In between the lives and complicated loves of the cast seem to be on the verge of unraveling only to bring our two women back to where they started - which I found fascinatingly sad. My wife disagreed, feeling that they had gained some insight into themselves from their summer in Spain but I wasn't so sure.

What I was sure about was how nice it was to see an Allen film that could be such a pleasure and spark such an interesting converstaion at the end of it.

Music News: Scarlett Johansson Unveils Tom Waits Cover Album Tracklist -- Continues To Bedevil Older Men

Oh ScarJo, where will it all end? Not content to wrap Bill Murray and Woody Allen around your perfectly formed little finger you've now managed to entice Tom Waits into giving his blessing to your new album and lured Dame David Bowie into warbling along on a few tracks. Here's the tracklist:

"Fawn" "Town With No Cheer" "Falling Down" "Anywhere I Lay My Head" "Fannin' Street" "Song for Jo" "Green Grass" "I Wish I Was in New Orleans" "I Don't Want To Grow Up" "No One Knows I'm Gone" "Who Are You?"

"Song for Jo" is an original, and the whole shebang is produced by TV on The Radio's Dave Sitek and features guitar work from non other than TVOTR and Yeah Yeah Yeah's axeman Nick Zinner. Bowie sings on "Falling Down" and "Fannin' Street."

Film Review: 2 Days in Paris : Woody Allen Inside Yet Another Young Woman?!

Julie Delpy stakes her claim to multi-hyphenate status with her new film 2 Days in Paris and judging by the evidence she has a future in acting/writing/ directing/scoring (all of which she does here) and perhaps even prop mistressing and best boy-ing. One fear I had going into this was that it would be a knockoff of the charming Richard Linklater films she starred in, the Sunrise/Sunset duology which she also co-wrote. The second fear was that this would be a big-screen adaptation of the Internet phenomenon One Night in Paris starring America's charmingest heiress.
Neither of these fears were fulfilled thankfully and Delpy instead shows herself to be an assured director in the mold of classic period (Annie Hall, Manhattan) Woody Allen. She's Allen if he had been born in France as a quadrilingual blonde woman. This crucial difference in gender, venue, age etc. means that Delpy's take on the classic Allen-esque relationship farce is unique and personal. As if to emphasize this and also wink at the New York Jewish neurotic character at the core of Allen's opuses Delpy casts the engaging Adam Goldberg as her foil. Goldberg generally plays variations on this same character but when he has the right script and a sympathetic director he's a pleasure to watch. There is enough depth and nuance here to display the range and acting chops that underpin his rapid fire sarcasm and nervous paranoia. Delpy plays a woman who is smart and prickly, flirtatious and principled, self-absorbed but also caring. They alternate in engaging and repelling the audience, a tricky fine line that is walked to perfection as our allegiance shifts around and both characters' flaws and finer points come into focus.
Like Woody Allen, Delpy also uses many real people from her personal life (including Goldberg) to play what can only be presumed to be variations on themselves. Especially amusing are her actual parents, playing her fictional parents as off-the-wall bohemians. A scene where Delpy confronts her drama-queen mother about over-feeding the cat while her lusty earthy father tosses out deprecations is a comic gem.
Delpy and Goldberg play a couple who are passing through Delpy's original hometown of Paris on the way back to their home in New York. The strains of their relationship start to show, exacerbated by a series of ex-boyfriends, Goldberg's inability to understand French, allergies, and an embarrassing photograph. In the wrong hands this could all come off as hackneyed or falsely whimsical but Delpy finds just the right balance with hilarious screwball comedy dialogue and culture clashes that cut both ways. The cherry on the cake is her jaundiced view of Paris, at once fond but clear eyed. Her Paris is populated by rude chauvinist cabdrivers, Muslim ghettos, tourists on and off acid, and bad plumbing.
It's the ultimate anti-romantic touch in what turns out to be a rom-com for people who hate rom-coms.
4 Out of 5 croissants: