Emotional angst with a light touch.

Rating: 9/10 (22 March 2011)

This wonderful and light hearted look at what we want and don't want is proof that Woody Allen is becoming a better film maker with age, and that a movie can be serious and funny at the same time. Here, two friends from America, Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall, arrive in Barcelona for a summer abroad and discover that love, desire and passion can turn emotional rigidity (Hall) into existential angst and uncertainty, while emotional failure to commit (Johansson) can become stability and acceptance, or at least, as the movie says as its last word, the certainty of what one doesn't want (in fact she achieves stability only as the glue that binds together a dysfunctional couple, but I don't want to reveal too much). Scripted and directed with economy, this is the rare movie with a voice-over narration that doesn't jar and doesn't actually impose a narrative structure on the viewer, although of course its content strives to. The acting and script are so good that Allen lets the narrative line and especially the psychological tension linking the four main characters emerge on their own, through the characters' interactions (besides Hall and Johansson, there is an understated and "truthful" Bardem and Penelope Cruz as Bardem's unstable ex wife who can only attain equilibrium in a triangular relationship with Bardem and Hall). A wonderful blend of having what we need and what we want, and all the uncertainty and danger that accompanies choice. The really interesting aspect for me was that Johansson and Hall both speak in Allen's well known intonations and rhythms, restarting sentences right before getting to the verb, tonal hesitations, and even a little Bronx whine creep into their inflections. To make sure we get the contrast between want and need as sometimes being one and the same, Hall is dark and of course Johansson is blonde, but the two are often shot with camera angles that underscore their physical resemblance. The real trick achieved by Allen is the ending, where Hall goes back to her ordered New York existence after flirting with emotional danger, and Johansson goes on to the emotional anomie that defines her existence and ironically gives her strength and stability. In other words, back to the beginning. Fans are often unusually vocal in their enthusiasm for Allen in the first few weeks after one of his movies comes out, and then settle down. He does appeal to that literate and sometimes pseudo intellectual crowd. This, I think is no exception. However, it will stand the test of time, in part because Allen continues to grow as a filmmaker who can nuance the human heart without the egocentricity that dominated his earlier films, and partly because he now attracts even better actors to his projects.