Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen)

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I just saw Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona on its opening night in Paris. A very bumbling film, with plenty of laughs, but mostly wooden and ungainly.

It's the story of Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), two friends who free-ride on a distant relative in Barcelona over the summer. Vicky is about to be married to a boring guy in New York and Cristina is a bit of an artsy drifter, who just produced a 12-minute film about love back in New York. Juan Antonio Gonzalo (Javier Bardem), a purportedly Asturian-born painter, takes them on a puddle-jumper to Asturias for the weekend...and things happen.

As some of you may know, the film was shot on location in Barcelona and Asturias (Uvieu/Oviedo, Aviles, San Xuan de Nieva, Monte Naranco). But this morning (Oct. 9, 2008) on my train ride into Paris, the papers referred to the film as Woody Allen's love affair with 'Catalogne' (Catalonia). Not even a mention of Asturias.

In fact, many of the scenes shot in Asturias are subsumed into the Catalan narrative, as if the Monte Naranco were just beyond the Tibidabo in Barcelona. When Oviedo is mentioned, Rebecca Hall refers to it as '...that Godamned Oviedo', in one of those moments of emotional turmoil.

It made me think what politicians (both Vicente A. Areces and Gabino de Lorenzo) will make of this film. All that political capitalization of Woody Allen to validate each others' policies gone to naught? Areces, in his primitive understanding of the human psyche, thinks he can buy Woody with junkets and percebes?

Does that mean they will turn their backs on Woody? Or will they, instead, try to capitalize on what they got: a few bogus scenes of Salinas as if it were in the Mediterranean and the mention of Oviedo as a small township north of Barcelona?

The trailer is available here:

http://www.vickycristina-movie.com/#