Woody Allen in Europe

Rating: 5/10 (23 May 2009)

The typical Manhattan director transplanted himself to Europe. His previous films were set in London, now he reached the continent and Barcelona is the setting of his summer romantic comedy 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona'. The setting of many European films becomes background for another classic Allen show, gathering a couple of gorgeous American female tourists and a suicidal ex-wife around the super-sexy Javier Bardem. Everybody is neurotic despite living a life without any apparent care and any expense report to fill. Their personal problems seem to be their whole universe. The scheme seems to work pretty well and pretty the same way in many of the films of Allen in the last two or three decades - it works due to the fluency and witness of the dialogs and of the splendid actors that love to star in his movies. This is not however his best cinema in my opinion. Allen is at his best when craziness exceeds and displaces the thin intellectual wit - an Yidischer Mamma speaking from the skies or a spectacled sperm cell waiting to be launched to fulfill his destiny. It is not the case here. VCB is another Manhattan story of Allen, disguised as an European summer comedy.