A bourgeois fantasy that fizzles out in 50 degrees of narcissism

Rating: 3/10 (27 March 2014)

VCB is the tale of two American women, Vicky and Cristina (Hall and Johanssen), who visit Barcelona one summer. Both fall in love with the same man (Bardem) who is terminally entangled with his (utterly narcissistic) ex-wife (Cruz). Cristina temporarily enters this menage-a-trois, then she breaks up with them and goes to Antibes for a while. Vicky is then tempted to kick over the traces with her boring new husband (blah blah), but thanks to the ex-wife's use of a gun, decides to return to the USA with her husband and Cristina.
If you've never been to Spain, Woody Allen's VCB will make you want to go. The look of VCB is great, all honey, warmth and harmonious landscape and architecture (if you stay in the pretty bits). You will also find a lot to enjoy in looking at Scarlett Johanssen, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz and Rebecca Hall, who are fine specimens of sexy human beings and do what I believe is called 'Acting'. The music is also great. Unfortunately, the story doesn't lead anywhere. And the anonymous WASP narrator gets rather annoying, particularly as the dialogue is so wordy anyway. Chris Messina as the husband wins the 'I am the Woody Allen character' badge, by the way.
I call VCB a bourgeois fantasy because it's like (and inferior to) one of those Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies from the thirties, in that all the characters are free to explore their romantic impulses in this beautiful setting without ever having to worry about bills, rent, doing their roots, selling their art/photographs/poetry, cooking, shopping, dentists, weight gain, laundry, contraception, mosquitoes, ageing parents, neurotic children - you get the picture: real life, apart from some jet-set lifestyle from a magazine, does not figure in this movie. And that would be fine, which it is in Fred'n'Ginger movies, if VCB wasn't so dependent on the audience caring what happens to the two friends.
The feeling goes, "Wow, this is a tough dilemma; but since all the characters' luxurious lifestyles (including invisible domestic staff) are unaffected by it, the problem isn't really serious. Therefore there is nothing to worry about". At this point you say to yourself, "Get on with it then, Mr. Director!". And the story fails to deliver anything resembling resolution, because there never really was any conflict. Fred'n'Ginger movies usually had some sort of 'real-life' problem to resolve, like a show to put on, or a divorce or social differences; Woody Allen focuses exclusively on problems of the heart, which as anybody who lives in the real world will tell you, is only part of the story. In spite of its pretensions to true drama, there is never in VCB a single moment of pathos.
3 stars for the acting, photography and music. None for the story or direction.