Whatever Doesn't Work

Rating: 1/10 (20 May 2010)

I find it paradoxical that Woody Allen's worst films, such as Match Point and Vicky Cristina Barcelona are currently the only ones that are box office successes. His better films are mainly viewed by just a few people in New York, the West Coast and France. Woody's films are erratically released in the UK, so I saw this after his later, much better, effort Whatever Works.
Basically, this is yet another remake of Manhatten. The difference is that the emotionally retarded, selfish characters in Manhatten are funny. Vicky Cristina Barcelona is meant to be serious drama. At least I think it is since I did not crack a smile in the entire 96 minutes.
We know from the films that Allen made in the UK that he has a tin ear for British English and he sets his stories in a bogus England that has never existed. I suspect that his Barcelona is equally bogus. The film looks like a 1950s travelogue. It has an inept voice-over and some irritating travelogue-style incidental music. The voice-over does not tell us anything that we cannot see: "They particularly enjoyed the works of Gaudi" (shot of Barcelona Cathedral) "and Miró (shot of Vicky and Cristina admiring a Miró. "They strolled past the church in the wonderful summer night air while people celebrated" (V&C walk past a church while people light fireworks. "finally winding up about midnight in a little restaurant", (we see V&C sitting in a restaurant).
Juan Antonio, played by a bemused-looking Javier Bardem, takes Vicky for a meal and, at the end, says: "Would you like to go to hear some wonderful guitar tonight?". Cut to a scene in a candlelit garden where a small group of people listen rapturously to a guitarist playing Albeniz. It gives the impression that there are guitarists continuously hanging around Barcelona gardens on the off-chance that someone might want to hear some wonderful guitar music. This level of bogusness makes me wonder whether I am being naïve about Woody's New York films. Maybe they are equally bogus.
Maybe Woody directed this on autopilot while he was thinking about the plot of Whatever Works. Vicky actually says "Whatever works" in response to the revelation that Cristina is enjoying a threesome with Juan Antonio and his ex-wife. There is the same ludicrous plot development where Cristina's holiday snaps get elevated to the level of great art. It is funny in Whatever Works but preposterous here. It only serves as an excuse to get Scarlett Johannson and Penelope Cruz into a darkroom for a bit of lesbian action. This being a Woody Allen film there is no on-screen sex so what we have is a film with soft-porn production values but without the soft-porn.
The actors struggle throughout to make sense of the ludicrous dialogue. Rebecca Hall is the most successful. At the beginning of the film she looks as though she could be a worthy successor to Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow as a Woody Allen muse but eventually even she too is submerged in a sea of implausibility.