Latin Lovers

Bardem, Cruz, Johansson and Allen on the Barcelona set.

Victor Bello / TWC

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Cristina, a young American abroad--and as incarnated by Scarlett Johansson, a great American broad--is all set to fall into the bed of her wished-for Latin lover, Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem). He wants to seduce her gently, but she can hear her erotic meter running. "If you don't start undressing me soon," she says, "this is going to turn into a panel discussion."

That's about the only joke in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody Allen's very pretty romantic comedy. Allen is long past peppering his scripts with killer aphorisms. Why should his characters crack wise, he thinks, when their antics and anxieties are so amusing?

Cristina has come to Barcelona with her friend Vicky (Rebecca Hall, who played Johansson's romantic rival in The Prestige). They hook up with Juan Antonio, one of those artists found so often in fiction whose true vocation is in winning and discarding the hearts of the many women who come to his bed. When he brings Cristina home, they are confronted by his volcanic ex-wife Maria Elena (Penélope Cruz), who has one of two reactions--kiss or kill--to the folks she cares for. She tried to kill Juan Antonio; with Cristina, she might settle for a kiss.

Like Henry James, Allen is a stern judge of Americans abroad: their sexual naiveté is no match for a society so expert in the art of gracious loving. Vicky is one of those Allen females whose insecurity comes out as hostility toward men; she castrates, or at least circumcises, them with every cutting word. Cristina is another Allen type: the artist manqué, who has the impulse to be creative but not the talent.

And like the two Americans, Allen is starstruck by the Spaniards. Bardem radiates a machismo so confident, it's almost passive. Cruz, far removed from the shy grad student she plays in Elegy, here is a wonder of erotic pyrotechnics. Her crazy heat is irresistibly warming.

Allen's view of this horny-going-on-nuts quartet is serene, indulgent--the way God might watch the exertions of his more charming creatures. At 72, the director is entitled to see wayward passion as comic. He's like the old man who, recalling how many times his heart has been broken, breaks into a grin. Vicky Cristina Barcelona hasn't many laughs, but this romantic roundelay is so enticing, filmgoers are likely to smile out loud.