Perhaps it was the weather but Woody has found his muse.

Rating: 9/10 (4 April 2009)

Perhaps it was the climate; I know that any time I go to Spain my mood lifts considerably and I am invigorated. Whatever the reason, "Vicky Christina Barcelona" is Woody Allen's best film in years; a warm, funny, cheerful and erotic picture filled with the spirit of Almodovar yet unmistakably a Woody Allen film. For good or ill no-one but Allen could have made this picture and while some may find his pre-occupation with pseudo-intellectual Americans with no interests outside of painting, photography, poetry or movies a crashing bore there are many of us who can still respond to that warm and generous affection he still holds for his emotionally battered and somewhat anally retentive romantics. This is a movie that hearkens back to "Annie Hall" and almost everything in-between and if he himself is now too old to play the bruised and battered romantic fool there are many others, younger and not necessarily of the same gender, willing to do it for him.
The problem recently, of course, is that Woody has been too quick to put his aphorisms and gags into the mouths of others as if it is he who is saying them and the result hasn't always worked to his advantage, here there is an easy -going naturalism to all his players that is distractingly un-Woody-like even if the situations and great swathes of dialogue are typically his. This is a film of considerable charm, luminously photographed in warm, Spanish sunlight by Javier Aguirresarobe and performed to perfection by the entire cast. Allen is a great actor's director who has already directed six players to Oscar success, (and Cruz as the passionate if unstable Maria Elena, here, being the latest). If there is no immediate Woody doppelganger we can still trace elements of him in both the characters of Vicky and Christina, (if Christina is more prone to the kind of tics we associate with Woody, it is Vicky who emerges as the more sympathetically drawn stand-in), and both these characters are beautifully played by Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson.
Spain is represented by the erotic charms of Javier Bardem's bed-hopping artist and Cruz's tempestuous ex-wife and they are both terrific. Bardem, as we all know, is one of the best actors in the world and Cruz seems to get better with every picture. If there isn't anything fundamentally new here, don't despair; many film-makers will never reach the level of gentle, ironic maturity that Allen displays in this film. He may be an old man now and, yes, it's possible that his best work is behind him but this doesn't feel like an old man's movie. Having just about hit the bar with his last several films and having nose-dived totally with the recent "Cassandra's Dream" this feels like an artist getting a new lease of life. It may be Spain, it may be the sunshine, it may even be the ghost of Gaudi; whatever, he is finally back on top.