Nothing in theaters at the moment is as pretty as Woody Allen's latest comedy, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," which features non only the lens-cracking gorgeousness of Javier Bardem, Pen�lope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson, but a saucy supporting performance by the metropolis of Barcelona and its fanciful Antonio Gaud� architecture. Caught in a chickenhearted light that feels as warm as fresh-baked flan custard, the film has the languid feel of an idealized summer holiday. And if midway through you realise with surprise, as I did, that not much has happened ... well, sometimes not a great deal happens on summer holidays either.
With the addition of Rebecca Hall ("The Prestige"), a young British actress with a long grimace and lovely droopiness, the film becomes not a love triangle but an unlikely quartet, whose peccadillos are outlined for us by a wry voice over narrator (Christopher Evan Welch). Vicky (Hall) and Cristina (Johansson) are a couple of Americans spending the summer in Spain; Juan Antonio (Bardem) is the painter they meet in a restaurant on a wine-soaked night. (Come to think of it, the entire pic appears to be loaded in pinot Chardonnay.) With his sleepy-eyed charm, he romances both of them; the practical Vicky declines, but the more than impulsive Cristina is bowled over � that is, until the arrival of Juan Antonio's volatile ex-wife Maria Elena (Cruz). From here, a variety of twosomes egress, some of them unexpected, and all of them great-looking.
As family relationship comedies go, this one doesn't take hold a taper to "Annie Hall"; its story billet is featherweight, and when it's o'er "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" seems to straightaway fade off. But it's an advance over Allen's last movie, the disappointingly familiar thriller "Cassandra's Dream," and at that place are some lovely moments for the actors. Patricia Clarkson, as the congener of Vicky with whom the lester Willis Young women ar staying in Barcelona, has a brief late scene that seems to belong to a different pic but is beautifully played. She speaks of regret, of the corners that life tail end turn, and Clarkson's wear out, knowing voice tells us much more than than her words. (She's similarly terrific, in a small character, in "Elegy"; would mortal please give this actress her own movie?)
And Cruz, her hair teased high and her eyes blazing, gives a wickedly suspect performance as the furious Maria Elena, who doesn't particularly want Juan Antonio but doesn't want anybody else to have him either. She doesn't trust Cristina ("Her eyes are not matchless color," Maria Elena notes suspiciously) and warns her ex, locution that she always has his best interests at heart. "Not when you're trying to kill me," says Juan Antonio, recalling an incident from their past. Maria Elena rolls her eyes dismissively. "Oh, that," she says, lightly tossing the thought away like a discarded tissue. It's a screwball function in an otherwise laid-back movie, and Cruz makes it sing.
Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com
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