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"  For the next two weeks, Stephen Garrett will be reviewing notable movies from the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. To read more of his exclusive reviews, please click here. ***** You&amp;#039;ll buy a ticket because Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, and Scarlett Johansson tongue-kiss in the red light of a darkroom. But don&amp;#039;t expect to get any wood watching Woody Allen&amp;#039;s timid erotic romance. New York&amp;#039;s venerable Freudian funnyman making Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which debuted over the weekend in Cannes, is not as bad as, say, Michael Moore directing Last Tango in Paris. But it&amp;#039;s still a little misguided to assume that the director knows how to tackle the sensual contours of a sexually charged summer two college girls spend in the Catalonian capital. Here in Cannes, critics and audiences have swooned for the pleasantly forgettable travelogue, possibly because we&amp;#039;re all nicely ensconced in the sun-kissed C\u00F4te d&amp;#039;Azur and susceptible to ending every evening tipsy on the local Proven\u00E7al ros\u00E9. But sober-minded civilians back in the U.S. may feel more than slight disappointment at the ways in which Allen captures carnality: start with the passionate liplock, then cut to the lovers&amp;#039; postcoital conversations. What worked for the generation that grew up on Garbo and Dietrich just comes off now as downright prudish. Especially when the three main characters are so, well, hot. Johansson plays Cristina, part of a duo (rounded out by the raven-haired beauty Rebecca Hall as Vicky) with opposing ideas about love. Vicky believes attraction must be grounded until it becomes fidelity. For Cristina, unbridled passion is the only way to happiness. The two are profoundly changed, though, the night they meet dashing painter Juan Antonio (a tanned and taut Bardem), who disarmingly invites them both to join him for a weekend of sightseeing, food, and sex. The plot thickens further when Juan Antonio&amp;#039;s suicidal ex-wife (Cruz, electrifyingly crazy and ridiculously ripe) elbows her way into the picture and wants him back. The film would have acquitted itself nicely had the artless Skinemax premise developed beyond its softcore intentions into a truly touching treatise on the fickle nature of the heart. Then again, we&amp;#039;re talking about a master director in the happy twilight of his years, content with a bride 35 years his junior, who has already spent a lifetime analyzing the ways in which relationships fall prey to selfishness and doubt. Why should he bother pushing himself? Better to enjoy the Spanish vacation. Missing from Vicky Cristina Barcelona are the keenly complex touches that elevated his earlier statements on caprice -- the angst-ridden dearhearts animated by Diane Keaton, Mia Farrow, and Dianne Wiest who gave his films the vivid contradictions of urban sophisticates. Then again, that&amp;#039;s been gone from his movies for years, and there&amp;#039;s vain hope in thinking that Iberia would inspire it again. What remains, though, is actually a relatively recent aspect of Allen&amp;#039;s filmmaking, which is his deft way of mixing comedy and drama. A proven master at both, the director now is at a point where the two blur so seamlessly that laughter comes unexpectedly and deliberately in a scene written and paced with a straight face. At its best, the result is as light as a souffl\u00E9, with an aspic aftertaste that deepens the mood. If only he could have tamed the urge to pose his subjects so dutifully in front of the expected Gaudian backdrops and punctuate scenes with requisite Segovia-inspired guitar cues. That bland exoticism only underlines his status as a tourist -- not only in Barcelona, but also in the hearts and minds of those voluptuous titular coeds. Vicky Cristina Barcelona opens September 5 in the United States. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/a4631/vicky-cristina-barcelona-review/>