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Vicky Cristina Barcelona

• Directed and written by Woody Allen
• Starring Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz
• Classification: 14A
• Rating:

Continuing his European tour, Woody Allen's latest is a lightweight musing on love's infinite variety, not especially comic, and certainly not tragic, but breezing along somewhere in the meditative middle. The oddly literal title, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, embraces a threesome — two women plus the beguiling city they visit — and so does the idea at the soft heart of Allen's meditation, the notion that a pure partnership in love, the romantic dyad, is never sufficient. There's always a "missing ingredient," a third element needed for complete happiness but hovering somewhere beyond our sustainable grasp. If he's right, then every relationship is a compromise, although the film is remarkably dispassionate about passion's limitations — it's just a pretty lament from an aging director, occasionally meandering and demi-wise.

The detached tone is immediately set by the voice-over narration, which Allen uses throughout as an omniscient eye, matter-of-factly establishing character and explaining motives. We learn, then, that the two American friends are polar opposites. Vicky (Rebecca Hall) is an academic who seeks security in love, and her fiancé fits the bill perfectly — Doug's a slug, decent yet dull. Cristina (Scarlett Johansson again) is an aspiring artist and sexual adventurer, treating romance as an extreme sport where the risk is essential to the reward. Already, the dialectic is emerging: In love's battle between the competing desires for comfort and excitement, the women each have what the other needs, the missing ingredient.

The ménage à trois turns literal when the two meet Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a Catalan painter who strides over to their restaurant table and issues a brazen invitation — a weekend getaway for three, sharing the local wine and his companionable bed. Common sense balks, but ardour jumps, and adventure wins out — off they all go. The ensuing sequence sees a shifting in the emotional balance sheet, as Vicky gets a taste of what she's missing — only a taste, but enough to disorient her. Back in Barcelona, Doug arrives and so does her impending marriage, an event that now doubles as her future's gateway and its slammed door.

This leaves Cristina to embark on another ménage, not just with Juan Antonio but also with his ex-wife, Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz), a painter herself and a tempestuous diva from the clichéd school of Latin sexpots. Theirs is one of those boiling-cauldron relationships — so hot it hurts — and Cristina falls into an unfamiliar role, a relative cooling agent who reduces the boil to a happy simmer. The unlikely result is an equilateral love triangle that seems to work, although amour's geometry is fickle, and how long can it last?

Admittedly, at this point, the angles are growing a little precious and, with the introduction of supporting characters suffering similar woes, repetitious too. The movie meanders, but, to his credit, Allen doesn't let it unravel. Usually, when not being funny, Woody gets trite, yet here the looseness begins to seem a part of his breezy purpose — to make a lament about love that isn't a lamentation but just a casual fact of life. With one exception, the gorgeous cast members try to respond in kind, to round out their (rather thinly drawn) characters and go light on the theatrics.

So Bardem flips the switch on his terrifying psychotic killer from No Country for Old Men — this time, he's a genial lady-killer, just as hypnotic but benign in his candour. As she did in Match Point, Johansson hopes to explore the needy, nervous underside of her sultry attributes — again, her full lips have a slight quiver. Cruz must content herself (and us) with lighting up the screen — she's acting at full throttle here, an exquisite force of nature. By contrast, Hall is the ground to her lightning rod, and she delivers the most down-to-earth performance. Indeed, as run loves its twisting course, Vicky, in many ways, proves to be the bravest student in town.

As for the hallowed union of love and sex, Allen dodges these encounters — sorry, but the couplings occur either off-camera or in discreet close-up. That's not to say there aren't some high readings on the sensuality index. When Cruz, Johansson and Bardem troop off for a picnic on a hot blustery day, their skirts and shirts playing peekaboo in the wind, well, that's quite the critical mass of screen pulchritude. And don't forget Woody's own love affair with Barcelona, which receives the picture-postcard treatment he once lavished on Manhattan. Gotham gives way to Gaudi and the Met to Miro, but the sensibility is the same, the city as a precious treasure, and so is the message: Life may be hard and short, love may be flawed or doomed, but, my, aren't we blessed with lovely distractions.