I have a confession to make. You could put it down to my own personal Woody Allen-style neurosis. You know how in the New Yorker's movies he nearly always has a character (until recently usually played by himself) who talks himself into a cul-de-sac about a forthcoming event that promises to be an emotional disaster? Well, such has been my loathing of Allen's London films, and let's face it his recent New York fare too, that when I went to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona at Cannes, I arrived coated in a layer of angst-induced sweat.
Then the credits rolled and I found myself transfixed by the Catalan setting and the light tone that perfectly matched the Spanish sun, as Rebecca Hall as the academic Vicky and the recent Allen favourite Scarlett Johansson playing the frustrated filmmaker Cristina go to Barcelona for the summer. A last hurrah before life becomes truly adult and they have to make big choices on career and marriage. Then Javier Bardem, playing a recently divorced cad artist, enters the fray and I found myself laughing. His attempt at picking up both Vicky and Cristina in a restaurant is the best entrance made by a character in an Allen film in years. That he holds this claim for less than half an hour, until Penélope Cruz upstages him as his feisty ex-wife, says much about the quality of the picture. I'm happy to report that Allen is back in top form.
The Spanish performer Cruz has really developed as an actress in recent years, so I'm surprised to hear the director say that it was fortune rather than desire that led to him casting her in his latest film. "I'm lucky because Penélope called me," he recounts in his famous New York accent. "I didn't know Penélope at all. I'd never seen a movie with Penélope in it until Volver. I didn't see any of the American movies she was in, but when I saw Volver I thought, 'My God she's so amazing, she's charismatic, a great actress and so beautiful and so unusual.'
"She called and said, 'I understand that you're doing a film in Spain and I'd like to participate if I can'. I thought, 'This is like winning the lottery' and I wrote the part for her." Allen knows how to conduct interviews. He takes a seemingly mundane question and goes off on a tangent that has you hanging onto his every word. He didn't miss a beat before continuing, "So I had Penélope and Scarlett. Both of those women happen by chance to be two of the sexiest, most beautiful women in movies. You can't do better. So the working conditions were good. Every morning I'd come to work at 8.00 and there would be Scarlett and Penélope, both looking incredibly nice, drinking coffee and chatting and you'd look at one to the other. They're both so different with different looks."
The leading man was also an easy casting choice. Allen has been a fan of Bardem for years and was desperate to work with him. "Javier, I knew his work in the movies," -Allen says. "I've seen him in a few movies and he's a very great actor. I always wanted him and I didn't know if I could get him, and when I think back now, I realise how bad things could have been if I didn't get Penélope and Javier because they are both so charismatic and such great actors. I don't know a lot of Spanish actors who speak Spanish and English and are charismatic and beautiful. I had the two best by accident right away. It was just good luck for me."
Vicky Cristina Barcelona is Allen's fourth consecutive movie made in Europe. He says he's fulfilling a dream of his youth. "It's gratifying because when I was -younger and starting off as a professional, all the films that we loved in my group were all -European films and all of us wanted to be European filmmakers, but we were all Americans. We had a different system of making films that was not European and finally I've been able to achieve some measure of being a European filmmaker.
"When I was a young man, I saw American films and European films. The European films were more interesting, more imaginative, more culturally deep, more sexually -adventurous, more sophisticated and mature. The American films were those Hollywood films conceived to make money, escapist movies. Americans would go to Europe and think it's a deeper life, a more cultural life, a more adventurous and artistic life than you have in the United States."
It's strange to hear Allen say this, as one of his best films, Manhattan, has a European sensibility, and his director-lead approach to filmmaking fits in perfectly with the auteur theory, coined to describe how the directors of the French New Wave would create such personal movies. You can't get any more personal than making a series of films in which a director has a leading role in which he seems to be continually playing a version of himself, or at the very least the public persona of an over-neurotic Jewish New Yorker that he artfully cultivated. He is the most European of all the iconic American filmmakers from the 1970s.
As well as being a confused love story, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is also about the travails of being a young artist. It's something that Allen has essayed before, although he never had any problems finding work himself. As a Midwood High School pupil in Brooklyn, he would send jokes to the popular newspaper columnist of the day. When they printed the ones they liked, they attributed them to him. A publicity firm then located the teenager and hired him to write jokes for them. Allen would travel to their Madison Avenue offices, where he earned $40 (Dh147) a week, every day after school. He was just 16 at the time. Soon after he had a top job in TV writing for Sid Caesar.
Nonetheless, success, no matter how quickly it comes, doesn't stop an artist from knowing what it's like to be frustrated. "This is a subject that has been on my mind for many years," Allen says. "I wrote about that many years ago in Interiors, the sense that always seemed so sad to me that there are many people out there full of feelings for things, ideas about life, about the universe and poetry, and they want so -badly to express them and they can't because they have no musical talent, no graphical talent, no literary talent, and yet they have all these feelings and it's a terrible position to be in.
"Sometimes that happens to me, where I have feelings about something and I want very much to express them and it's not working. I'm trying to write something and it's not coming and I can't do it, or more frequently it happens to me in music, because - and I'm not saying this facetiously - I'm a very bad musician, and I play all over the world, really, because I'm a celebrity from the movies. If I wasn't a celebrity, they would have no interest at all, because I'm extremely mediocre. In fact, worse than mediocre. But I want so much to play, and I hear other musicians play and they play so great, and I do everything I can. I close my eyes and I move my body, but it doesn't come out because it's not inside me, and I feel very sad because it's not inside me."
Allen's first success as an artist in his own right came as a stand-up comedian in nightclubs. His time in this trade would have a huge influence on his film work, including his Barcelona sojourn. "I very often speak to the audience myself or have a narrator because I used to be a cabaret comedian and I used to come out on stage and talk to the audience," he says. "I have a tendency to do what I want in the movies. If not me, then a narrator or some other character. It's just a habit of mine talking to the audience."
In Vicky Cristina Barcelona, it's Johansson who does the voice-over. Allen tries and normally succeeds in making one film every year. It's a policy that he openly admits means some films are inevitably better than others. He's also had more success doing comedies than any other genre. Indeed, his maligned London trilogy was made up of dramas. Yet Allen reveals that it's drama rather than comedy that has always been his first love.
"When I went into movies when I was younger, I didn't want to do comedy. I wanted to do these tragic stories. It was just by accident that what I was good at was comedy and they were successful and people would say do more and I'd try to do something very serious and people would say don't bother. All the artists that I really admire in my life - and I have admired some comic artists - but the most profound artists that I've liked have always been the tragedians, with tragic plays and serious dramas. Bergman is a good example. Chekhov. In my country, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams."
The comic is showing signs of the frustrated artist as he continues. "It's very difficult in the movie business when you are really dependent on being financed for large sums of money. It's like being an architect. You need millions of dollars to do your art form and so it's very difficult to manipulate things so you can simply do what you want to do, especially in American commercial cinema, and it's not been an easy thing. I've been really lucky to raise money over the years, and have freedom but I've had to manipulate myself very carefully."
He continues to have a remarkable career and shows no signs of stopping. The only time I've ever witnessed any sign of his age is at a press conference in London when he was promoting Cassandra's Dream. He asked the questioner to speak up as, "I'm a little deaf". He doesn't seem to understand the concept of retirement and will probably be making movies until his last breath. It's a point he rams home by saying, "To the best of my knowledge I'm healthy, full of energy. I exercise and am full of energy and so I continue to make films. Why shouldn't I? As long as people are willing to finance them. But I could envisage a scenario when I wake up in the morning and I can't raise money for a film. They say, 'You know, your films are too terrible or you are a has-been, no one wants to see your films and everybody hates you and we don't want to invest money.' When that is the case, I'd still probably work. I'd write a book. I can't picture myself getting up in the morning and just enjoying myself. What would you do? You'd walk around, go to the museum or have lunch. I'd go a bit crazy if I did that."
Vicky Cristina Barcelona has also raised expectations that the old maestro still has some more great works up his sleeve. Over the years, Allen has become a master of moving fast and thinking on his feet. He speedily returned to New York when he saw an opportunity to make a new movie before the mooted actors strike took place. His next film will be another comedy, this time starring Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood and Patricia Clarkson, who can also be seen intermittently in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. All Allen will say about his return "home" is that the prices have gone up since he last rolled his cameras there.
It's a smart move, as five years ago people seemed a little bit bored with the director always making films in the Big Apple. Now everyone is wondering whether Europe will have changed his perspective on the city that never sleeps. Vicky Cristina Barcelona will be screened tonight at 9pm at Cinestar Marina Mall, Screen 5, as part of the Middle East International Film Festival.