September Movies: ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona,’ ‘Choke’

It used to be easy to think Woody Allen’s best years were behind him. Match Point changed that; not an altogether great film, but a good one, and enough to induce speculation about a possible late-career renaissance. After an interval of two abject stinkers (Scoop, Cassandra’s Dream), that expectation is belatedly, but joyously fulfilled with Vicky Cristina Barcelona. It’s easily Allen’s best film in a decade.

Like Husbands and Wives and Hannah and her Sisters, Allen is again preoccupied with the difficulty, if not impossibility, of sustaining romantic love. The difference here is his new-found focus on mercurial, unmarried twenty-somethings, and a narrative strategy that owes much to the quixotic exploration of young love mastered by New Wave auteur Eric Rohmer. The result is not wholesale re-invention per se, but a new and bracing redirection that feels startlingly youthful and fresh for a septuagenarian.

Prudent Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and wildly impulsive Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) are best friends set to spend a summer in Barcelona before Vicky weds in the fall. No sooner do they touch down than they meet José Antonio (Javier Bardem), a Bohemian artist who proposes a ménage-a-trois weekend in Oviedo. Vicky is repulsed, Cristina charmed. But it’s Vicky who sleeps with him first, only to watch with mixed feelings as José Antonio pursues a relationship with Cristina. Their burgeoning romance is challenged, however, when the lothario’s volatile ex-wife, Maria Elena (Penélope Cruz), shows up, joining José Antonio and Cristina in what becomes a shaky but temporarily functional three-way relationship.

In Allen’s ironic universe, everyone gets what they desire, but is rarely the better for it. José Antonio and Maria Elena are, as a pair, so passionately unhinged they cannot live together or apart, and effectively destroy their chances of ever truly moving on. Love, as always, is a bitch.

Despite these disappointments, VCB is anything but a lugubrious affair. Allen is clearly invigorated by his new milieu, employing a travelogue’s worth of scenic locations. The cast is also as invigorating as any the director has worked with. Johansson delivers a credible turn as the free spirit and Hall does repressed desire perfectly, but it’s the Spanish talents who steal the show. Bardem’s study in bedroom eyes miraculously avoids what could have easily devolved into camp, and Cruz is an absolute dervish of raw nerves and kinetic sexuality. She’s the year’s first shoe-in for an Oscar nod.

Chalk it up to location, cast or timing, but Vicky Cristina Barcelona might just as easily pass for the work of a nervy newcomer as that of a practiced master. And that’s perhaps the best compliment a veteran director could hope to receive.

Few pleasantries are in store for actor-turned-director Clark Gregg, who helms his own adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke, without any of the verve and urgency of Fight Club. Instead, Gregg seems to be going mainly for laughs, and failing.

Sam Rockwell stars as Victor Mancini, a sex-addicted theme-park employee who fakes choking in restaurants, hoping that his saviors will take pity on him in the form of cash. The money is intended to keep his deranged mother (Anjelica Huston) in a constant-care facility where a winsome doctor (Kelly Macdonald) deceives Victor into believing he was born of a genetic experiment involving Jesus’ foreskin.

It takes a careful, if not ingenious hand to make such absurdist material work, and Gregg is not equal to the task. The back-story is too messy, the situations too incredible, and the jokes too easy. And it’s a shame, too, because Rockwell is likable as hell, but always winds up in films where he’s either misused (Joshua) or better than his material (Snow Angels). Here’s hoping he’ll soon fi nd a project that doesn’t choke so hard. New York’s favorite nebbish proves three’s company with Vicky Cristina Barcelona, while Choke lives up to its name.