Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) follows two American women spending a summer in Barcelona. Vicky is engaged, orderly, and thinks she knows what she wants. Cristina is sure of nothing and always looking for something. At an exhibition a painter named Juan Antonio makes both of them the same offer: come away for the weekend. Then his former wife María Elena arrives. She is unstable, gifted, and wrecks everything between them. But the film's claim is that this three way arrangement works better than either pair. A narrator tells us directly what the characters are feeling, and that choice is the most criticised thing in it. It belongs to Allen's European period, one of the films he made outside New York, shot with Spanish money in Barcelona and Oviedo. Penélope Cruz won supporting actress as María Elena and became the first Spanish actress to win an Oscar for acting. The character appears halfway through and takes the film over from the moment she enters. Cruz and Javier Bardem speak Spanish in some scenes and Allen wanted no translation; not understanding them is deliberate. Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall take the other two parts. It runs 96 minutes. Good for: relationship drama, Allen, and European texture. Less good for: the narration is wearing and most of the characters have privileged problems.