by Catherine Leopold - 2009-05-25

Two American friends – free-spirited, rash Cristina and sensible, straight-laced Vicky – travel to Barcelona to stay with distant relatives of Vicky’s for the summer. Early in their stay they meet Juan Antonio, a local artist who invites them to stay with him in the small town of Oviedo and makes no secret of his attraction to both girls and his hope that they will all sleep together during the trip.

While Vicky – who is engaged to an equally sensible and straight-laced  New Yorker – is outraged at the artist’s proposition and flatly refuses his offer, Cristina, no stranger to short flings and numerous boyfriends, is immediately attracted to Juan Antonio’s good looks and audacity, and accepts his invitation, leaving Vicky no choice other than to tag along. In beautiful Oviedo, drunk on the glorious surroundings, sunshine and red wine, Cristina and Vicky fall for Juan Antonio’s charms and eventually the characters become part of an absurd love triangle – more of a square, really, once Juan Antonio’s fiery, unbalanced ex-wife Maria Elena turns up.

Woody Allen’s film is concerned with the nature of love and lust, responsibility and creativity, and how each informs and influences the other. While some people embrace love and all its wonderful and painful consequences and others settle for what is convenient and wonder what might have been, none can escape the powerful hold that the need to experience love has upon us all. It is this struggle – against, for and within love – that drives the film and its characters.

Barcelona and Oviedo look sumptuous, the actors are all ridiculously attractive and the film has a leisurely kind of grace that goes nicely with the ‘summer holiday somewhere lovely’ vibe. However, the fact that Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a fairly un-taxing watch also means that it feels a little unfinished, a bit half-formed. The voice-over is a big problem; the film isn’t narrated by any of the characters or even Woody Allen himself, but rather an anonymous male American voice who says nothing that couldn’t be expressed onscreen if Allen could be bothered to characterise more effectively or just leave some things to the audience to fill in, rather spoon-feed us every detail.

The actors are all fine, with Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz providing quiet charisma and fiery passion respectively and livening up the proceedings in ways that Rebecca Hall and bland Scarlett Johansson do not. The fault lies mainly with Allen’s script; Vicky is at first uptight and rigidly moral, and then indecisive and weak-willed as soon as Juan Antonio bats his eyelashes at her, while Cristina is supposed to be some liberated, bohemian type but the only way we know this is because the voice-over tells us so and because she takes a few good photos. Bardem and Cruz get better writing, but only just. The difference is that they make the most of two interesting but thinly-sketched characters while Johansson and Hall struggle with weak material. In fact, it’s only when Bardem and Cruz let rip at each other in Spanish that the film really comes to life, which is a shame, because there isn’t nearly enough Spanish in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Allen’s direction is smooth and unobtrusive, only really noticeable when the camera is drooling over the locations. It’s not that the film is particularly bad. It’s just that it leaves you with the nagging feeling that for all of the talking – and there is a lot of talking – Vicky Cristina Barcelona doesn’t actually have much to say.