VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA. Dir Woody Allen. 2008

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Love and sunshine for Vicky and Christina, two young American girls spending a summer in Barcelona. Vicky (Rebecca Hall) is engaged and has come to stay with a family friend whilst doing research for her thesis. She is confident, mature and not to be trifled with. Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) is unattached, sexually available, sexually uninhibited and keen to be trifled with. When the two girls are approached in a restaurant by bohemian artist Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) with a direct offer to come away for the weekend with him and enjoy a sexual threesome, Cristina is game.

Vicky agrees to go along as chaperone but barely tolerates Juan Antonio’s well rehearsed seduction techniques and apparently innocent openness. Cristina slips upstairs to his room for some eagerly anticipated lovemaking but falls ill and spends the weekend alone in her own bed, throwing Vicky and Juan Antonio together.

Rebecca Hall is excellent as the modern, educated young woman with a life plan, a strong interest in her career and a sound understanding of human behaviour. Acerbic and impatient at first, she begins to see a more appealing side to Juan Antonio when he stops playing the Lothario. Bardem clearly relishes the opportunity to play the relaxed seducer after his chilling performance in ‘No Country For Old Men,’ and exchanging the psychotic coldness of that role for a mischievous warmth and sensitivity.

Johansson is underused, playing the sexy girl again when she is capable of far more. Woody Allen used her well in ‘Match Point’ where she played a dangerously neurotic femme fatale but here, she merely has to be aimless and discontented. Penelope Cruz is sultry and glowering as the unstable ex-wife, Maria Elena, pouting and storming, outspoken and fragile as a child, and Chris Messina gives a natural and realistic performance as Vicky’s new husband.

Despite the intrusive voiceover, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is funny and touching with an ironic perspective on sexual etiquette and morality, and the photogenic cast and sunny locations are a visual holiday.

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