Word: cristinas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Oviedo, Juan Antonio briskly, suavely, steers Cristina to his hotel room. He hardly needs to use all his seductive talents; Cristina is eager for a night with a Latin lover. ("If you don't start undressing me soon," she tells him, "this is going to turn into a panel discussion.") But a bout of stomach poisoning breaks Cristina's mood, and she must convalesce the rest of the weekend. That leaves Juan Antonio with the disapproving, and spoken-for, Vicky. She is one of those females, rife in the Allen canon, whose insecurity is expressed as hostility...
...less than Henry James, Allen is judgmental of Americans abroad - they betray a sexual naïveté when exposed to a society so much more practiced in the art of gracious loving. And no less than Vicky and Cristina, Allen is almost starstruck by the Spaniards, and the Mediterranean ease in forming, then releasing, sexual liaisons. The hallmark of his characters is the fumbling confession of furtive love; but in this idealized Catalonia, where nothing romantic is forbidden, everything is beautiful, as natural as breathing in synch with the woman who has fallen asleep in your arms...
...painter so sexy that Juan Antonio's father still has erotic dreams of her, Maria Elena had been Juan Antonio's muse, competitor and wife; their turbulent marriage ended when she tried to kill him. Of course she shows up, once her ex has set up house with Cristina, allowing Allen to run further amorous permutations. A darkroom kiss between Cruz and Johansson is probably Allen's most direct expression of romantic-sexual connection...
...movie is narrated in an American voice (Christopher Evan Welch's) that is pitched slightly above all the characters. The voice knows Vicky and Cristina best, but you suspect it wants to live with, possibly bed down with, cosmopolitan Juan Antonio and crazy Maria Elena...
...realizing we always have more to learn from others, and about ourselves. The movie has neither the sardonic heft of Max Ophuls' La Ronde nor the emotional precision of Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night, two films that also dance the change-partners gavotte. But Vicky Cristina Barcelona is so engaging so much of the time that it feels like a modest rejuvenation: evidence that a summer in Spain can do wonders for a writer-director who may not have outlived his prime...