Woody Abroad: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

David Begelman

Maybe it’s no accident that Woody Allen films like Match Point and his latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, are such successful ventures, whereas Scoop, a film that came between the two, was more or less a dud. Ironically, the director appeared in a major role in Scoop, but not in the other two films. The quality of Woody’s work nowadays seems immeasurably better when he puts himself behind the camera, rather than in front of it. It’s as though the Annie Hall era has been over for some time. Self-casting in roles with one-liners smacking of stand-up comedy routines may have worn thin as a continuing chapter of modern cinema.

At first blush, Vicky Cristina Barcelona seems to be just a comedy about American tourists abroad in Spain. Looks can be deceiving. It is actually a more complicated film than Match Point. The latter is about the sticky predicament of a murderer who evades justice by chance. (One of the graphic images in the film symbolizes the indeterminacy of outcome: a tennis ball teetering on the edge of a net, unsure about which way to fall).

Vicky Cristina Barcelona, a comedy of manners, dwells on the way love is loosened up in exotic circumstances. Yet there is another theme implicit in its narrative. Are novel love entanglements signs of liberation or personal imbalance? Are they manifestations of a new sexual freedom or symptoms of going haywire? And how do we tell these apart?

 In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there was no quandary over dramatic purpose; the unsettling aspects of love gone flukey had to be relieved and equilibrium restored. In Woody Allen’s movie, you’re never sure whether love’s confusions steer its principals in the right or wrong directions. And its characters all ask themselves the same question: “Am I where I should be, or just plain wacky?” Vicky Cristina Barcelona isn’t a comedy of errors; it’s a comedy about whether what happens in love is an error to begin with.

The plot revolves around two friends, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) who, at the invitation of Vicky’s relative Judy Nash (Patricia Clarkson) and her husband, Mark (Kevin Dunn) are on summer vacation in Barcelona, a gorgeous, ochre-hued Spanish city. The film is graced by the lush cinematography of Javier Aguirresarobe, and there is a voice-over by a narrator (voice of Christopher Evan Welch), who describes the ongoing action throughout the course of the film. Performances of principal actors are beautifully nuanced, and at a high level of achievement—thanks to the director.  

The two women are distinguishable types. Vicky is a staid, somewhat conventional woman with academic interests. (Her attraction to Barcelona is inspired by her fascination with Catalonia, especially the works of the architect Gaudi.) Her commitments are all in place, as well as the one to her fiancé, Doug (Chris Messina). Cristina is quite different. She has just had a disappointing love relationship, is unsure of what she wants in life, and has little sense of achievement, except having recently completed a short film about—wouldn’t you guess?—love.

At a restaurant, the two eyeball an artist, Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), an attractive man they remember seeing at an art exhibition earlier that day. The three exchange glances, after which Juan Antonio approaches their table. Without the drawn-out preliminaries that would distinguish an American approach to hitting on two women, he summarily invites them to fly with him to Oviedo for a night of fun and love making. Cristina is up for what seems to her to be a novel and enticing adventure, whereas Vicky initially protests the outrageous idea. Yet they both find themselves acceding to the plan, whereupon everyone’s world starts to change, and at breakneck speed.

Vicky’s erstwhile composure is shattered after a night of lovemaking with Juan Antonio (a secret she keeps even from Cristina), while Cristina later moves in with him. Into Cristina’s world of new enthusiasms steps Maria Elena, Juan Antonio’s former wife (Penelope Cruz). Maria Elena has recently attempted suicide, and out of concern for her (or emotional enmeshment, depending on the spin you put on it) Juan Antonio brings her home to a love-nest already in place. Maria Elena’s stability seems to strengthen as she gets to realize that the attraction among the threesome is just what the doctor ordered. They all draw closer together, even sexually, as Christina’s talent as a photographer blossoms. (Woody’s ode to the relationship among love, liberation, and creativity?).

The plot continues to thicken as lovers reprise their trysts and separate again. The soufflé has risen in a stunning moment of culinary delight before flattening down to an ordinary existence.

Woody Allen admitted that Vicky Cristina Barcelona fulfilled his fantasy of becoming a European filmmaker. For some time now, he has enjoyed more popularity in Europe than at home. For one who has already gone through his Godard, Truffaut, Fellini, and Bergman phases—not to mention in this film a hint of Pedro Almodóvar—the home away from home must continue to be appealing. But in a rare moment of soul-searching, Allen also admitted that the only place he ever really wanted to be is in his bed. Considering this filmmaker’s prodigious output, not likely.

   

   

    

       

 

 

“The East:” freeganists on the march

AT THE MOVIES

David Begelman 

Like Robert Redford’s 2012 “The Company You Keep,” Zal Batmanglij’s 2013 “The East” loses the ball somewhere along its 116-minute length. The former film dropped it when it came to exploring in depth the sometime conflict between the law and individual conscience. The latter film wanders away from the promising challenge of addressing why people become transformed in different circumstances.

Both films depict events in the lives of political activists. In the Redford movie, the central characters are a group of anti-war protesters long in the tooth, whose past activities resulted in the death of a bank official. In Batmanglij’s film, they are a group of anarchists whose “jams” involve the self-professed goal of punishing the corporate polluters of the commonwealth. And we’re not mincing words here. On one occasion retribution amounts to poisoning a group of industrialists at a party; on another, it means forcing an entrepreneur and his wife into their own creation: a pool of toxic industrial wastewater that has already infected an entire town.

The contrarians in “The East” live in a commune and, as in all insular cultural enclaves, develop rituals that seem to be on the somewhat dotty side. These include an inane love fest involving a spin-the-bottle game, or a dinner in which the participants come to the table in straight-jackets, feeding each other with long wooden spoons held in their mouths. On another occasion, they assemble in the woods adorned with strange masks. It’s as if their tiny civilization were destined to undergo mutated life forms, Darwinian style.

Batmanglij and Brit Marling, who is also the lead character in the film, wrote the screenplay. In preparing for it, they both spent two months in 2009 engaging in “freeganism,” or the habit of eating food discarded by others in order to celebrate the virtues of a penniless existence. At one point in the film, Marling’s character illustrates the practice by taken a bite out of someone else’s throwaway fruit.

 Marling plays “Jane,” a woman who lives a quiet, bourgeois existence with her boyfriend, Tim (Jason Ritter). But she also doubles as Sarah Moss, an undercover agent for a private intelligence agency headed by “Sharon” (Patricia Clarkson). The latter is as smoothly calculating a boss as you’re likely to see on any intelligence circuit. Her agency is dedicated to rooting out “terrorist” enemies of the commonwealth, like the group Sarah has infiltrated. Subsequent conflicts between the two are sparked by her transformation as a member of a group she starts to feel might have a point. Among her accoutrements are a crucifix, regalia and capabilities any well-appointed secret agent should possess. These include a microchip that can be swallowed and then vomited up to be retrieved, as well as dandy a set of karate skills you’re likely to encounter in any Tokyo dojo.

Moss’s personal transformation involves a growing ambivalence about her role as an agent for the powers that be. Maybe this is to be expected, since public statements by Batmanglig and Marling register political distaste for multinational corporations, especially the pharmaceutical industry. More than anything else, “The East” is a depiction of Sarah Moss’s ever-shifting sympathies as she grapples with the complexities of a role that sees both sides of the moral equation. Yes, the polluters are doing bad things; but is murdering them the proper way to address the grievance?

Moss more often than not is depicted as a bystander to the action of others, watching it unfold as though inner parts of her were going in different directions. The last half of the film abandons the moral narrative altogether, and devolves into a cops-and-robbers chase in which anarchists are chased hither and yon by skillfully coordinated F.B.I teams.

Needless to say, the compelling issues raised in the film are in no way resolved through having Sarah fall in love with the anarchist Benji (Alexander Skarsgard) or having Sharon remain as impervious to human feeling as she seems to be.

The talented Canadian actress Ellen Page stars as “Izzy,” a disenchanted member of the clan, with an ax to grind against her wealthy father. It’s quite a come-down from her engaging portrayal in Jason Reitman’s 2007 “Juno.” Roman Vasyanov’s cinematography is polished. Sometimes it seems almost too good for a narrative that is, alas, too often mismanaged.