Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008, Woody Allen)
To the girls vacationing in Spain (the engaged Rebecca Hall and the single Scarlett Johansson), Javier Bardem offers a romantic getaway, including sex -- but it's not a sordid sexual rendezvous so much as a chunk of time spent between adults. Bardem has a bluntness and sexual appetite, but also a courteousness, as in how he insists his ex-wife (Penelope Cruz) speaks English in front of Johansson. It may be a comically exaggerated version of a Latin lover (and in some respects, Bardem, an invisible actor, is a great actor in the mold of Mastroianni), but it doesn't play strictly as a comedy, and offers real freedom from the stasis of conventional romances (through non-monogamy and a threesome relationship). The acting is mostly free from the actor quirks we expect from actors in Woody Allen movies -- Bardem and Cruz in particular have an amazing chemistry. And it's a hopelessly romantic premise, based not just on the exotic locale but the world of lovers, painters, and artists, and Bardem in particular decked out in wonderful linens. (Perhaps simply, the American males are khaki and Lacoste-wearing businessmen.)

I have no idea how personal this is to Allen's own views of romance (it would be easy to draw comparisons between the non-conventional here and the highly-criticized aspects of Allen's private life) and I don't necessarily think it's valuable to judge a movie that way. And I may find it intellectually interesting that this movie, essentially a series of examples against traditional one-man one-woman monogamy and depictions of its loneliness and repression, shows negatively the kinds of things that, as a gay man, I consider Holy Grail (long-term monogamy). I don't think those readings illuminate the movie, but it's interesting how the freedom the film offers, which is readily available in the gay community, is ultimately as lonely and repressive as the depiction of marriage. That said, the kind of adult affair that Allen shows -- prior to the crazed Penelope Cruz -- can be the kind of awakening that livens people up and can refresh their lives, and in that respect (unconventional romances or affairs that aren't just sexual) it shows opportunities for happiness.

Ed Gonzalez, an interesting writer, finds fault with the movie's depiction of fleeting bisexuality (which he strangely calls lesbianism). But the scene is remarkably chaste and could hardly be viewed as Allen fantasizing. And the moment is hardly "lesbianism" but rather an introduction of a new kind of sexual expression for a character who's lived heterosexually. (I don't think that's insulting to gay people -- it's open-minded and free from black/white straight/gay politics.)

Allen's film doesn't ultimately come down in favor of long-term monogamy or the unconventional romances. Like Bardem's poet father, Allen, in a more misanthropic way, may be suggesting that the world simply hasn't learned how to love.