The surprise of Woody Allen’s 39th film
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In the old days, everyone would beg me to take them to an early screening of a Woody Allen film. As the ‘90s wore on, some of the hard-core fans began to move on. Soon the waiting list got shorter ... and shorter ... and ... finally, even my wife stopped going with me. So when I went to see ‘Vicki Cristina Barcelona’ the other night, I went alone. In fact, I almost didn’t go at all.
I don’t know about you, but these days, when people talk about Woody Allen, the conversation essentially revolves around the question -- when did you give up on him? Did you give up after 1994’s ‘Bullets Over Broadway,’ which had a great Dianne Wiest turn as a neurotic diva? Or did you stick it out until 1999’s ‘Sweet and Lowdown,’ which featured Sean Penn as a brilliant jazz guitarist who was a rotten human being? Or did you finally get off the train with 2005’s ‘Match Point,’ the murder mystery that earned Allen his last Oscar screenplay nomination? (When DreamWorks had an early ‘Match Point’ screening for The Times, the response was so tepid that no one even stayed to sample a lavish spread of food. When journalists skip a free meal, that’s always a bad sign.)
I’ve been off the Allen bandwagon for nearly a decade, having been disappointed too many times. It felt as if his best days were behind him. He seemed to make movies out of habit, not out of inspiration, locked into a filmmaking style -- and comic sensibility -- that came from another era. There are filmmakers who’ve done great work into their 70s (Robert Altman and John Huston instantly come to mind), but once filmmakers of a certain age go into decline, the decline is irreversible.
But here’s the good news. ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona,’ due out Aug. 15 from MGM and the Weinstein Co., is a delight. Call it a throwback or call it a comeback, it’s Allen’s best movie in years. But that’s not the only surprise about it:
The film grows far more complicated as it goes along, but complicated in the way of classic farce, not tedious storytelling. What makes it such a surprise is that it shows Allen exploring a new form: It’s a bedroom farce, but performed slow and smooth, like a Ben Webster sax solo, without the hell-bent rush of a ‘Noises Off’-style door-slamming comedy. In an era in which comedy is such a blunt instrument, it’s a kick to see a comedy that’s actually a cozy meditation on the unpredictability of love, with the passion lurking just under the surface, erupting when we least expect it. Allen even tells much of the story via a dispassionate narrator, who shares information with us, the audience, on a need-to-know basis.
The movie is full of good acting, especially from Bardem and Cruz, who are pretty irresistible every moment they’re on screen. But the real surprise performance comes from Rebecca Hall, who starts out as the obligatory Allen stand-in character, jittery and full of nervous tics, but takes the part in an entirely unexpected direction, not only showing an emotional vulnerability but also nicely capturing the wobbly uncertainty of a woman startled by how thoroughly she succumbs to a passion she has so doggedly resisted.
So mark your calendars. It will soon be time to give a Woody Allen movie another try, a movie that, compared with all the summer fast-food high jinks, feels like a sumptuous meal.