I have to admit that my reading of Woody Allen’s films will be forever influenced by the fact that he married his step-daughter of sorts, Soon-Yi Previn, adopted daughter of Allen’s paramour, Mia Farrow.  The relationship became public when, according to CNN, Farrow found nude pictures of Soon-Yi, then 21, in Allen’s apartment.  Allen was not only Soon-Yi’s presumptive guardian, as Farrow’s lover; he was also 35 years older than she.

Okay, so it was an affair between two consenting adults that culminated in a committed relationship—not all that unlike, perhaps, the relationship documented in Chris & Don: A Love Story, which I reviewed recently.  But the scenario is morally suspect on so many levels: it was a betrayal of Allen’s relationship with Farrow; it was a betrayal of guardianship; it raised questions about how early the sexual relationship between Allen and Previn had begun.

Certainly, at the time, I had misgivings about the dark seriousness of Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, released in 1989 and filmed when Previn was only eighteen.  Was the moral turpitude examined in that film Allen’s justification for deeds already committed?  Or was he at that time just pondering whether he could “get away with murder,” on a metaphorical level?  I certainly found myself reading the loving shots of young girls in that film very differently.

Sometimes I find that 1992’s revelations about Allen’s character seem to have little bearing on my reaction to his films.  Bullets Over Broadway, for instance, or Cassandra’s Dream don’t seem to be overly autobiographical or charged with sexual overtones.  And I still consider Crimes and Misdemeanors to be one of the great films of the 1980s.  (Farrow, interestingly, told me during a recent interview that she agrees.)

But then I run into a film like Vicky Cristina Barcelona, ripe with sexual “liberation” and featuring Allen’s latest leading ingénue, Scarlett Johannson, and my gut reaction is: Ugh. And that’s got to color my critical response, I imagine.  But the film begs for it, on all fours.

The story concerns two dissimilar friends who spend a summer vacationing in Spain.  One is uptight, sexually and emotionally repressed, and headed for a marital compromise of safety; the other is open-minded, free-spirited, unready to commit to anything but tasting everything life has to offer.  One is a brunette; the other is a strawberry blonde.  One is rather plain; the other is quite voluptuous.  I’ll just let you guess which one Johansson plays, and which one gets “enlightened” by the passion of Barcelona.

Vicky and Cristina run across a charmingly womanizing rogue—another surprise?—who is so sexually liberated that he’s willing to court both ladies at the same time… as a threesome.  When things don’t quite work out between the natural pairing—Juan Antonio and the oversexed Cristina—the, uh, doors open for Vicky to become swooningly taken by the latin Lothario.  But the threesome that develops actually ends up involving Cristina and Juan Antonio’s wildy creative and mentally unstable ex-lover Maria Elena. Cristina not only becomes enamored of open, multi-partner relationships but tries out gal-on-gal stuff, too.

Whew!

So on the surface, this all plays out as one of those painful conservative-anglos-go-to-latin-lands-and-discover-passion films that I find so overly tiresome, the kind of thing that seems suitable for undersexed high school teachers to foist off upon teens longing for liberation.  And, to be frank, that’s pretty much how I reacted to this film as I was watching it.  I am particularly tired of seeing films from writers and directors of advanced years that seem to scream, “I have just managed to throw off the bonds of restraint!  Come, celebrate with me!”  I mean, really; after Soon-Yi, from what restraints could Allen be possibly struggling to get free?  Are the world’s prudish morals really repressing him?

But this is all my bias speaking.  Upon reflection, I find that that Vicky Cristina Barcelona actually challenges some of those conventions and turns them on their heads—even if those challenges will probably be lost amidst all of the film’s seductive cosmopolitan mores, championing of indulgent artists (another tired trope), and Johansson’s pouty lips and flouncing breasts. 

Some of the imagery supports the notion that Allen is actually taking some objective and critically analytic distance from his subject. When Vicky and Cristina first arrive in Barcelona, for instance, they tour through the night streets while revelers dance amidst the fire of sparklers they wave gleefully overhead.  Sure, it’s fun to play with fire, the tableau says; but it’s also easy to get burned.  Much later, after Cristina has fully fallen under Barcelona’s spell, we see her image juxtaposed with that of a bird in a cage.  Coincidence? Probably not, in an Allen film.

And then there are the opening and closing voiceovers.  Sure, the opening seems to be an indictment of Vicky’s sterility and a de facto endorsement of Cristina’s openness; but when we get to the end and the narrator comments on Cristina having found a “tolerance she was proud of,” the tone is sarcastic enough to make one wonder: is the edge of liberation starting to grow a little dull for Allen?

One thing for sure, it is for me.  This film may be more complex than it seems on the surface, but I’m tiring of Allen films that seem to be about nothing more than Allen’s own moral dilemmas. I far prefer Whit Stillman’s take on Barcelona—also very cosmopolitan in flavor, but much lighter and less obsessed with sexuality.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is rated PG-13 for “mature thematic material involving sexuality, and smoking.”  Smoking?  Smoking?!?!?!  The sexual content in this film, while not all that explicit, easily warrants an R rating.  Wow.  This isn’t Europe, folks.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Greg attended a press screening of Vicky Cristina Barcelona.