Cannes. Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

"The only parts of Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona that really and truly feel alive and crackling are the Spanish-language scenes between Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz," writes Jeffrey Wells.

"These two, portraying a pair of identically tempestuous, self-obsessed painters whose marriage has fallen apart due to an overabundance of heat and impulse and Spanish vinegar, are dynamite together. They create spark showers when they rage and taunt and rekindle their mutual hunger." The problem? A "persistent, obnoxious, unwanted and thoroughly unnecessary narration track... There were boos."

But for Variety's Todd McCarthy, VCB, as he calls it, is "a sexy, funny divertissement that passes as enjoyably as an idle summer's afternoon in the titular Spanish city.... Just as London did when Allen went there for Match Point, the Catalan capital serves as an evident stimulus for the director. Even if the film provides a strictly tourist's view of the city (a perspective justified by the scenario, in fact), and one just as upscale and heedless of money as ever for Allen, VCB is by several degrees more hot-blooded than his usual norm, thanks especially due to the palpable chemistry of Bardem and Cruz in the second half. The film is all about sexual attraction and what to do about it (and in what combinations)."

Screening Out of Competition.

Meantime, the trailer's been searing the wires for the past few days.

Updates, 5/17: Screen Daily's Mike Goodridge finds Vicky "as close to consistently delightful as Allen has been able to deliver since 1994's Bullets Over Broadway.... [T]his sunny romantic comedy could well be the director's biggest audience-pleaser in years. Taking place over a summer in picturesque Barcelona, Allen and his local DP Javier Aguirresarobe (Talk to Her, The Sea Inside) set their attractive cast against a lush backdrop of colourful Gaudi architecture, lavish cityscapes and rural idylls which douse the love tangles and intrigue of the story in a blissful ambiance straight out of a Shakespeare comedy."

"The story opens with Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), two best friends heading to Barcelona for eight weeks of fun," writes Kim Voynar in Cinematical. "Vicky's distant relations Judy (Patricia Clarkson) and Mark (Kevin Dunn) live in Barcelona, and have invited the girls to spend the summer there, where Vicky will do research for her Masters and Cristina will soak up the local culture. Vicky is engaged to be married to Doug (Chris Messina), a stalwart, likable, but rather boring young man, and Cristina is recovering from her latest breakup and looking for an artistic outlet for her pent-up creativity.... Suffice it to say that Allen has created one of his best works in years, a film that is funny, philosophical, and imaginatively explorative of the meaning of love and desire."

Woody "still has loyal admirers in Europe," notes Time's Richard Corliss:

After the screening we ran into one of his champions: Michel Ciment, the doyen of French critics. 'You still go to Woody Allen films?' asked Michel in mock or mocking surprise. He was just setting us up for a pronouncement: that whatever Allen's current reputation, years from now people will take a retrospective look at the 40 - some films he's made and proclaim him as part of a holy trinity of movie comedy with Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder.

Well, maybe not in that empyrean, but arguably in the ballpark. It's hard not to feel warmly toward Allen after VCB, his first vital movie since Match Point three years ago (we quickly throw the veil of oblivion over Scoop and Cassandra's Dream), and maybe his most engaging large-scale effort since, let's say, Crimes and Misdemeanors nearly 20 years ago.... With seven major characters, five of whom have affairs during one Spanish summer, VCB is a God's-eye view of the thesis that "only unfulfilled love can be romantic."

"[I]t's true that VCB is travel porn at its most arrant, an upscale tourist fantasy of Barcelona locations and table settings, fine wines and clichéd Catalan studs whispering outre sexual possibilities in the ears of shallow, susceptible American women," writes Ty Burr. But: "[T]he movie's inordinate, even ridiculous fun, despite an overly chatty narrative track (not sure by whom at this writing) that I wanted to slap down after about five minutes.... Bardem is simply delicious as a post-Valentino roué who's just as sexy but not quite as smart as he thinks. When he, Johansson, and Cruz settle into a sensual ménage a trois, it's hard not to think Allen has become the dirty old man of the movies. However he gets his jollies, though, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is an unexpected picnic - a lightweight New Yorker short story lit up with real warmth."

IndieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez has a snapshot of Woody and Cruz and a few notes on the press conference. Jeffrey Wells has another shot.

"[T]he film belongs to Bardem and Cruz," reaffirms the Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt. "This is a Spanish version of Private Lives, a couple that cannot live apart or together, whose love will always burst into fiery combat. Their scenes are some of the funniest Allen has ever put on film, and the culmination of this love/hate tango is not to be missed."

Cinematical's Kim Voynar reports at length on the press conference.

"Maybe Allen is another of those Jerry Lewis figures in American culture who just reads differently in Europe (see also Jim Jarmusch, Abel Ferrara and, increasingly, Quentin Tarantino) but I'm inclined to believe that both sides are wrong about him," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "Allen seems to me to have been punished unjustly by his former American admirers for perceived failings in his private life, and it's no good judging an artist on that basis. On the other hand, I don't see how anybody can argue that his recent films - while they're far from being terrible - support the widespread European view that he remains a major figure in world cinema." As for VCB, "it's a pretty good late Allen film, meaning that it's a competent, entertaining blend of sweetness and misanthropy, and that the director seems enormously far away from his characters."

Updates, 5/18: "Vicky Cristina Barcelona is something of a play date between typical Allen characters and ones from an Almodóvar film," suggests Alison Willmore. "They occupy an income bracket in which it's possible to spend the summer in Spain taking in Gaudí, to effortlessly flee to Antibes for a few weeks to clear one's head, and to grow weary of discussions of home purchases in Westchester.... Narrated, via cheerily omniscient voiceover, like one long anecdote (or an episode of Arrested Development), the film doesn't come to any particular point at all, other than that both girls have a good sense of when its the right time to go."

"Woody Allen's Vicky Christina Barcelona might be the easiest film to sit through of all in his recent European period, but that doesn't mean it's any damn good," writes Glenn Kenny. "The film comes to peculiar life during Bardem and Cruz's exchanges, which are largely in Spanish and which I suspect the pair rewrote and directed themselves. The exchanges are ridiculous - Cruz comes off like a Spanish-speaking Daffy Duck in a particularly foul humor - but even so ring truer than anything else."

The Hollywood Reporter's Gregg Goldstein talks with Woody.

"[Y]esterday critics celebrated the birth of a new English star," reports Vanessa Thorpe in the Guardian. The new star would be Rebecca Hall.

Update, 5/20: "Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a larky, agreeably bittersweet romantic and sexual roundelay that contains some of the liveliness and funny, observant flair of Allen's short fiction," writes Patrick Z McGavin in Stop Smiling. "Averaging a movie a year for four decades, Allen has repeated himself of late. I'm not sure he is further capable of making a sustained and brilliant work, something on the level of Manhattan or Hannah and Her Sisters. The short story equivalent is more inviting, because Allen is now better and funnier in miniature."

Update, 5/31: Online viewing tip. Matt Singer and Glenn Kenny man the IFC Cam for the red carpet proceedings; the hour features generous clips from the film and the press conference.

---

Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 08.

Last year: Cannes @ 60. And Cannes 06.

---

Posted by dwhudson at May 16, 2008 4:16 PM