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Whatever works By Uri Klein Tags: Scarlett Johansson  Woody Allen is pleased. The meeting with the 72-year-old director, which I attended along with a few other international reporters at this year's Cannes Film Festival in May, was held several days after the premiere of his new film, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," which will kick off the Haifa International Film Festival after Sukkot and is premiering this week in local cinemas. The movie won Allen the best reviews since his 2005 "Match Point," which also debuted at Cannes. France has always been good to Allen: Even when his films were scathingly rejected in the United States, French critics and audiences remained loyal, and the organizers of Cannes have always been willing to reserve a distinguished place for him in their program, even when Allen adamantly refused to enlist his films in the competition. Allen is clearly in a good mood when he walks into the hotel room where the gathering is held and takes his place at the round table. He is relaxed, smiles a lot and is willing to answer questions. Advertisement "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" continues Woody Allen's cinematic journey outside the United States and especially outside New York City, which was the setting of nearly all of his films until "Match Point," one of three films that he shot in England. In one of my previous meetings with Allen, after the release of his first British film, he joked that he had left the U.S. because all the American journalists and reviewers who appreciated his work had died. Now Allen has moved from England to Spain, and he is deeply impressed by the pleasant experience of working there. Making a movie that is set in Barcelona, he says, was one of his longtime dreams; all he needed was a story, set in this beautiful city. "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" follows two young American tourists who come to Spain for their summer vacation. As in previous films, Allen stages a confrontation between two contradictory worldviews, represented here by the two friends' attitudes toward life and love. Vicky (played by Rebecca Hall) is the more practical of the two: She is engaged to a nice young man named Doug (Chris Messina), who is waiting for her back in New York. Although she does not love him madly, he offers her a secure life without too many surprises. Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), by contrast, is the heady romantic, planning nothing and ready for any adventure life throws her way. Vicky knows what she wants, Cristina knows only what she doesn't want, and that is to live the life to which Vicky aspires. Vicky is finishing her master's thesis on Catalan identity (which is the reason why the two friends chose to vacation in Barcelona). Cristina has just made a 12-minute film - which she hates - about the difficulty of defining love. Then the two meet Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a charismatic and charming local artist, who invites them to spend the weekend with him. Vicky hesitates, but Cristina jumps at the chance. A fourth character joins them: Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz), Juan Antonio's ex-wife, also an artist. The former couple have a tempestuous relationship; at one point Maria Elena apparently even tried to kill her ex. As the movie unfolds, Allen's characters split up into pairs, threesomes and even foursomes, so that by the end of the film everything has changed - and yet everything remains the same. 'I'm a romantic' Allen calls his latest movie "a sad comedy." "Vicky and Cristina are not foolish," he says, "but they are sad. Vicky will live the life she chose, but it will be a life without great highs or lows. Cristina will never be satisfied because she will never know what she wants. Juan Antonio and Maria Elena are also sad characters. They are filled with passion, they love each other, but cannot live with each other." Does Allen himself believe in love? "I am a romantic," Allen replies, "but I am also a realist. The importance of luck in life occupies me more and more - I have already dealt with it in 'Match Point' - and I believe that love is also a matter of luck. You can look for love all your life and this does not mean that you will find it. The personal, emotional, sexual and intellectual needs of a person are so delicate, they are like exquisite wires, and it is very difficult to find somebody whose needs will fit yours. If the wires do not fit, a short circuit occurs. It is all a matter of luck, but finding a cure for cancer is also a matter of luck. The best cure for cancer is to be lucky and not get sick." The plot of "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is the product of two different stories Allen wanted to tell. One is about two young American women going on summer vacation to some exotic locale; the other about a man whose ex-wife drives him crazy, preventing him from having new relationships. The man in this story, Allen says, feels responsible for his former spouse, who finds pretexts for calling him whenever he is with another woman, including saying that she has tried to kill herself. Then, one day, Allen suddenly thought of tying the two stories together, and the movie came into being. There is, of course, a long tradition of movies - including "Three Coins in the Fountain" and "Summertime" - in which Americans, especially American women, go to Europe and are changed by the experience. In those movies, too, the heroines usually meet some charming Latin lover. Here, that role is played by Javier Bardem. Can "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" be considered an ironic comment on this tradition? Allen: "Absolutely. In America there exists a running mythology, dating back to the novels of Henry James, that Europeans are more advanced, more mysterious, more sophisticated and more sexual than Americans, who come from a country which is religious, puritanical, backward, sexually repressed and all those cliches. From this stems the myth that in Europe people live differently and that when Americans come to Europe and meet the European lifestyle they change and will never again be satisfied with the life they led before." Does Allen himself believe in this myth? "My view of Europe is also romantic," he says. "But I also have a romantic view of New York. When I shot my films in New York they used to tell me that my view of New York is not real, that I film a New York that does not exist, that Martin Scorsese shows New York as it really is. But I do not really care. This is the way I want to see New York and this is the way I want to see Europe. Yes, I believe that Europe is more interesting, more mysterious, more beautiful, more romantic and more exotic, that the women there are more beautiful, the food more tasteful and the lifestyle more complex and interesting. Maybe I am right and maybe not. Anyway, this is what I believe, and if I am wrong, I do not want to know." One movie a year "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is the third Allen movie to feature Scarlett Johansson, following "Match Point" and "Scoop." Rebecca Hall, an actress now as well-known, was recommended to him by his casting director. Allen met with her and decided she was right for the part. What he found especially thrilling this time was his work with the movie's two Spanish stars: Cruz (who called him in New York one day to say she heard he was making a movie in Barcelona and wanted to star in it) and Bardem. "I always wanted the actors in my films to improvise, to forget the written text, but I have seldom succeeded in that, maybe because they have had too much respect - misguided respect in my opinion - for the words I have written in the solitude of my bedroom. When actors speak a written text they sometimes sound fake, not like real people but like somebody who reads a text that someone else wrote. When they throw away the text and improvise they are at their best. Suddenly they sound like themselves, like real people." In "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," he says, his old dream was finally realized. Maria Elena and Juan Antonio speak both English and Spanish in the movie, and in the Spanish-speaking scenes Allen asked Bardem and Cruz to improvise, even though he does not understand the language. "I had complete faith in them, complete trust in their talent. I knew they would enrich the movie," Allen says. When the improvised scenes were translated for him later, he adds, he saw that his decision had been justified. Allen writes his movies on a typewriter he bought at age 16 for $40. "The salesman told me then that the machine would exist long after I myself am gone. He was right." He stayed in Cannes during a break in the filming of his next picture, "Whatever Works," for which he returns to New York after not making a movie there for four years. He is shocked by how expensive New York has become, complaining that while the relatively small budget of his movies, $15 million, is enough to make an elegant-looking picture in England or Spain, in New York it all goes to collateral expenses. The new movie, he reveals, will also be a comedy, but unlike "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" it will be "not a sad comedy, but a comedy of laughs." The cast includes Evan Rachel Wood, Larry David and Patricia Clarkson, who also plays a supporting role in "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." Does his fast pace of filmmaking - almost one movie a year - stem from a need to make as many pictures as possible? Not really, Allen answers. The worst stretches of time for him are the ones between one production and another. When he finishes a movie, he shuts himself up in his bedroom to think of a new idea. When one comes along, he is too happy to care what kind of idea it is. Whether the new film will be a thriller, a musical or a romantic comedy, Woody Allen jots it down. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Israel policy Obama camp dismisses Jesse Jackson's remarks on ridding the U.S. of 'Zionist control.' Welcome to AqsaTube The Palestinian militant group Hamas launches its own version of YouTube.

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