Classic Woody

Rating: 9/10 (25 August 2008)

Who knows what to expect from Woody Allen? Most of the films he's made this decade have been pretty unpredictable, and suspiciously Allen has agreed with the public reaction regarding most of them. I thought Melinda and Melinda was a fine, worthwhile effort, Scoop was just mostly mediocre, Match Point was the best film of Allen's career, and Cassandra's Dream was easily the worst he's made. So considering his recent schizophrenic attitude, I wasn't sure where I'd go with this film, but I was still looking forward to it, mostly for Cruz's supposed Oscar-worthy performance and, well, you gotta give the guy credit after so many years of brilliant comedies, and even his failures being interesting failures.
The film centers around two best friends (Vicky and Cristina) who decide to spend the Summer in Barcelona, and while there they are both faced with romantic conflicts with an artist, Juan Antonio, who has invited them to his home for the weekend to get to know each other and have sex. But it's not a love/hate, conventional jealous-romance-plot, it's situations are entirely human and almost brooding in a sort of loosely ardent manner. A lot goes on between their relationships, especially with Cristina, who develops among the strangest love circles ever put on film which I'd rather not give away. Vicky, who is about to get married, forms a sudden attraction towards Juan, but I never really saw it as sexual attraction, but rather as an escape from the knowledge of the desolate reality of commitment. Oh, and did I mention Juan's psychotic manic-depressive ex-wife eventually comes into the picture? Despite the absurdity of the entire situation, the whole thing is executed with definitive authenticity. Part of that may be because of the natural dialogue, which was right off the bat the obvious work of Woody Allen. The perfect dialogue combined with the absurdity of the situation created several absolutely perfect moments of comedic timing. It's characters are smart and human, not just self-aware variations of cliché'd romantic comedy characters. It's situations are not tired and consistently replicated "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl" plots, but an episodic stream of events packed with energy and originality just about every other romantic comedy this year seemed to lack.
But alas, not all was perfect. The film's narrator spoke with an irritatingly robotic tone, along with narration being entirely pointless from the start, and I also thought the film spent too long expressing Vicky's passionless relationship with her husband (which in a way, may have been intentional)... but it's an otherwise tiny flaw which hardly detracted from the overall joyful experience Woody has provided. And yes, give Cruz that Oscar.
8.75/10