Film & TV

A Bergman in Barcelona, Woody Allen Triumphs

I always thought Woody Allen would withdraw from the world, like his idol the late/great Ingmar Bergman, who took flight to the tiny island of Faro before the end of his artistic potency to write The Magic Lantern, his illuminating and scorching autobiography. But, Allen still resists - instead of resignation, we get expansiveness. His new, oddly titled film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is evidence that the 72-year old comic savant will not leave the scene. Like Moliere, he will walk off the stage one day and drop dead, never revealing his ghosts.

But not yet. Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is a messy love triangle…err hexagon, that is plotted out in a clean geometrical proof. It’s a pretty thing to reduce the problem of desire and seduction to such neat plotting. And so another Woody Allen influence, the Greek tragedy, is at work here–not only in the plot’s simple clarity, but in its climax which allows the central character to see the whole of life’s difficulties and fates before her.

Javier Bardem, who plays a painter and tour guide to the two leading women in the film, is like the minotaur released from the maze - fueled by Tempranillo - and ready to lick the city’s crepuscular beauties. But it’s Penélope Cruz, playing Bardem’s ex-wife, who steals the light from him, dark and viciously beautiful, each of her words are lashes on Bardem’s back. Cruz has the most life of anyone in the film, and viewers begin to hope for her explosions of anger. Originally we are lead to believe Bardem will be the catalyst that ignites the film, but it’s Cruz’s nasty core that forces its conclusion.

In a nod to Bergman’s Persona (1966), Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is a formula for melding the two woman characters, played by Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson. They get to live in each other’s skin for a bit by swapping Bardem and thus fusing with Barcelona as well. But it is only Rebecca Hall, the central character, the neurotic Allen stand-in in a female incarnation, who is able to view the problem of their wine-soaked affairs and provide clarity to them. Hall’s transformation from seduction to understanding is a credit to the strength of Allen’s writing still - Hall is the only one to step out of the rabbit-snare of desire and see their sexual relations as the humble machinery of fate trying its best to lay us all to the ground.

In 2008 the filmgoing public would like to discount Allen. And of course he’s more of a product these days than an auteur (there is a life size statue of him in Oviedo, Spain, one of the film’s locations). But, somewhere, like Nabokov in his Swiss hotel, Allen continues to put pen to paper with a bright clarity, defying expectancy.