“Vicky Scarlett Christina Rebecca Penelope Javier Barcelona” is one of the more endearing pile-ups emanating from Woody Allen’s assembly line of late. Like much of his output since “Husbands and Wives”(1992), and certainly since production and budgetary constraints have restricted his ability to make substantial reshoots, “Vicky Christina Barcelona” seems like a series of interesting accidents rather than focused, purposeful filmmaking. Written, Allen says, to fulfill a fat bolso of cash proffered by Spanish producers, the movie is about as flat—and as sunny—as any film by Almodovar’s customary cinematographer, Javier Aguirresarobe, could be. Two American women in their 20s go on an adventure in Barcelona. Vicky (Rebecca Hall) is about to marry a New York moneyman, embodied with loathsome zeal by Chris Messina. Christina (Scarlett Johansson) is the neurotic female Allen’s always fixating on. An older friend (Patricia Clarkson) takes the women around town, and at an art gallery, they glimpse Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a wanton Lothario who’s still in love with his troubled, mercurial wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz). Extended dialogues about banal romantic complications and the implications of commitment, shot like dispirited bouts of table tennis, are later leavened by the knock-down-drag-outs between Juan Antonio and Maria Elena, deflated somewhat by a dozen or more times Bardem is guided to say “Speak English!” when Cruz’s inflammatory performance is at its most Anna Magnani-ish when she’s flinging her native tongue. There’s also an incessant narration by a male narrator, as in a novel, “Little Children” or “Frontline” that’s not as aggravating as it might be with less eye candy in the compositions and settings. As in most recent Allen, the performances flirt with incoherence, with each actor bringing their skills to an ill-measured whole. A lingering whiff of misogyny hangs over the proceedings as well: it is possible to lovingly enact shallow dialogue. There are a few slow burns by Johansson that delight, and Hall manages to bring her own likeable presence, and by turns, Allen himself and Mia Farrow, into her performance of a diffident woman of privilege. The ending would be glorious in another movie: a chilling moment of Chabrolesque finality applied to adult lives that have only just begun. 98m. (Ray Pride)
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