DVD reviews: Vicky Cristina Barcelona | The Class

Published on Thursday 11 June 2009 15:03

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Optimum, DVD: £17.60, Blu-ray: £24.45 ) The Class (Artificial Eye, £19.56)

THESE DAYS, A WATCHABLE FILM by Woody Allen seems to occur in spite of what the once-genius auteur does behind the camera, not because of it. Take his latest film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Thanks to the bar-lowering wretchedness of his recent triptych of London films (and be warned, a fourth British film is currently in pre-production), this was ludicrously over-praised upon release. It's not without its small pleasures, but these are almost entirely the result of the life Javier Bardem and Penlope Cruz manage to inject into Allen's tired, recycled screenplay.

Both may play fiery Spanish stereotypes (he's an artist and a lover; she's an artist and a psycho), but because they don't approach the script trying to mimic the rhythms of Allen's classic New York films, whenever they're on screen together the film stops feeling like a parody of said films. Moreover, whenever Allen allows them to engage in subtitle-free exchanges in their native tongues, genuine heat and passion bleeds through the film and everything briefly feels new, rather than time-warped from an Allen film of yesteryear.

Unfortunately, the film's main focus are its titular characters: Vicky, a young American student trying to complete her thesis on Catalan identity, and Cristina, her desperate-to-be-artistic best friend who wants to experience the raw passion that artists – and only artists – experience. Played, respectively, by the excellent Rebecca Hall and the increasingly dull Scarlett Johansson, both are flipsides of the standard Allen protagonist (neurotic and chronically unsatisfied with life), though only Hall comes close to giving a rounded performance. Both also find themselves falling for Bardem's painter, Juan Antonio, who seems able to offer them exactly what they need.

In Vicky's case, he's a respite from the bland life she's about to enter into with her bridge-playing investment banker fianc. For Cristina, he's a chance to live out her fantasies. Neither finds true fulfillment, and complications arise when Cruz's Maria Elena boomerangs back into Juan Antonio's life. She really doesn't have enough to do to justify her Oscar win, but she does make what she puts on screen count, which is more than can be said for Allen.

Far better is The Class, an uncomfortably authentic-seeming picture of life in a modern-day high school that's miles from the clich-ridden inspirational teacher dramas that tumble out of Hollywood. That's hardly surprising. Co-writer and star Franois Bgaudeau (making his acting debut) taught for years in a Parisian high school and the book he wrote detailing these experiences is the basis for the film.

According to the credits, that book has been "freely adapted", which is usually legal-speak for "bears no relation to its source material", but in this instance reflects the docudrama veracity with which director Laurant Cantet has approached it: he semi-improvised the script by recruiting the film's ethnically diverse students from local Parisian high schools and having them play fictionalised versions of themselves.

That blurring of fact and fiction gives the film real power, but Cantet's main achievement is the way he's marshalled all these disparate characters into a cohesive, subtle and textured drama that follows a year inside the classroom.