Scarlett Johansson says that kissing Penélope Cruz in her forthcoming film Vicky Christina Barcelona was better than kissing Jonathan Rhys Meyers in Match Point. Now, she also points out that kissing Cruz was ‘more pleasant’ than kissing their Vicky Christina Barcelona (VCB) co-star Javier Bardem because she was ‘less hairy’.
But in Match Point, Jonathan Rhys Meyers’s character is clean-shaven, and she still liked Pen better. You follow? She enjoyed kissing Cruz better than both of them because Cruz is a girl.

Perhaps ‘pleasant’ is not the most exciting word she could have used for their fabulously sensuous snog in the excellent VCB, but let’s brush over that for the moment. And let’s definitely brush over the fact that she said that filming the love scenes with Cruz and Bardem was ‘deeply unsexy’ because they were, of course, surrounded by film crew who were munching sandwiches, biting their nails, clearing their throats, etc. ‘It really takes the edge off,’ Johansson says, seemingly dead serious. Well, that’s work for you…

This native New Yorker has once again worked with her legendary fellow New Yorker Woody Allen on what has been called his ‘steamiest movie’ to date. That makes her roll her eyes. ‘Think about those phrases; what are you talking about? You’d think we were making some crazy and insane X-rated Bertolucci movie or something.’

In our interview, Johansson addresses both the erotic and the political points about the romances she shares in her new film – but perhaps not in the best or most forthcoming way that her lesbian audience would like... For example, she mentions that in other interviews she was asked: ‘So, the kiss (with Cruz)? What was it like? Did you just do one take and run off to your trailer?’
Forgive me, exasperated reader, but I took this to mean that it was so erotic that she immediately had to run off to her trailer WITH Cruz to make love, or at least by herself to administer a little, erm, self-attention. Shatteringly, Johansson reveals that what those more conservative interviewers meant was, did she run off because she was traumatised? ‘I’m like, God, what? Is it like the Loch Ness Monster that I’m kissing, or something?’

Sigh, another letdown from the less-evolved. But we have Johansson to be our ambassador, sort of. ‘It’s ridiculous and it’s so conservative,’ she says, exasperated. ‘The characters are in love with each other and that’s what people who are in love with each other do; they’re intimate. It’s so not exploitative and so respected and normal,’ she says.
Johansson, Cruz and Bardem’s characters end up in a ménage à trois, and in the film we see a romantic scene where the three of them are kissing each other in turn as they prepare to go to bed together. There are no graphic sex scenes – there’s only one sex scene in total, in fact, between Bardem and Johansson, which is so artfully and passionately shot that it is beautifully arousing, no matter what your take on sexuality or facial hair.

But before the threesome even happens, there is the pièce de résistance.
Cruz seduces Johansson in a photographic darkroom, and it’s a gorgeous kiss. Just a kiss, with some tender arm-stroking, but lingering, sumptuous and romantic – and frankly far better acted than the climax of many lesbian movies or even most kisses in The L Word. You’ve got to hand it to the two actresses, and to director Woody Allen. He might be seen as the perennially narcissistic ‘dirty old man’, but he doesn’t position Johansson and Cruz’s first encounter as a gratuitous pairing for Javier’s (and all straight men’s) benefit. Their coming together is a natural tryst just between the two of them.

The New York Post’s Page Six gossip column went a bit over the top when it quoted a source from the filming as saying: ‘It is extremely erotic. People will be blown away and even shocked. Cruz and Johansson go at it in a red-tinted photography darkroom, and it will leave the audience gasping.’
They don’t exactly ‘go at it’. Mind you, website Hecklerspray’s description of it as ‘a homosexual moment’ seems hilariously buttoned-up. It later calls it, erm, ‘lezzing off’.

Johansson simply laughs at all the brouhaha, but won’t let it become a full-blown discussion, unfortunately. Still, the fact that she’s nonchalant about it all and critical of those who, in this day and age, are truly shocked – or at least prepared to whip up hysteria about two women ‘going at it’ on the silver screen – is indisputably cool. Less cool is the factoid that she threatened to let her lawyers off the lead when reports surfaced in 2006 questioning her sexuality, after she was reportedly seen ‘lip-locking’ with a close female friend in a nightclub. Around the same time she laughed off reports that she’d had sex with Benicio Del Toro in a hotel lift, but freaked out about any suggestion she might not be entirely straight.
‘I wasn’t really that bothered by the story about me and Benicio. It wasn’t true but it was just ridiculous. I was bothered about the story about me being a lesbian. I got my lawyers involved because it was untrue and it hurt my friend, who has nothing to do with this business. So it was important to me to stop that story,’ she said, apparently unaware of the double standard.

Maybe that little unsupportive blot on her record can fade further now with her distinctly unruffled – if humourless – comments on her liaison with Cruz. Adding that she regarded both the older Cruz and Bardem as something of professional mentors during filming, she said, ‘I would work with Penélope in any way or form. She’s wonderful, a gem, a lovely, lovely woman and is beautiful inside and out. She’s a fantastic actor and has proven herself a million times over.’
And she points out that she would be ‘thrilled, absolutely’ to win Best Kiss at the MTV movie awards this spring, for which she and Cruz are regarded as front-runners – bad luck, Bardem.
But then, instead of going for the big, red-hot boost for her gay-friendly credentials and endorsement of lesbians everywhere, she kills it by adding: ‘Any time that my name and Best Kiss comes up, I’m always more than inclined to accept that kind of award.’

Meanwhile, she was mystified but flattered to learn that she had apparently inspired Katy Perry’s hit track I Kissed A Girl. ‘I had no idea about the song, but I should get a cut!’ she laughed. Again, though, she tosses the wet blanket after the warm affirmation. ‘It’s really flattering, but my lips are kind of taken.’
Johansson recently married Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds at a very private wedding in Vancouver, and has pledged to spend more time north of the border.
Despite the fact that they had been seeing each other for less than a year when they got engaged, and he broke off an engagement to music star Alanis Morissette, Johansson seems blissfully happy and secure as a newly-married woman. ‘This is a beautiful time in my life,’ she says simply.

Although she will spend more time in Ryan’s native British Columbia now, she is typical of the clutch of film stars, such as Drew Barrymore, Chloë Sevigny and Maggie Gyllenhaal, who see New York rather than Los Angeles as their true home. They are, perhaps, more down-to-earth, somewhat sceptical of the concept of celebrity, and committed never to move lock, stock and barrel to Hollywood.
Johansson professes she wishes to have a ‘bi-coastal’ existence. Talking of ‘bi’, there is a nice moment in VCB where her character, Christina, is asked a typical straight-mate’s question by the fiancé of her friend, Vicky (played by British actress Rebecca Hall), after he has flown from the US to visit the two best friends during their adventurous summer holiday in Barcelona. He asks if she considers herself bisexual because she’s now having sex with both a man and a woman. She replies scathingly by asking why he wants to label her. Of course, that could simply be a lazy or politically-correct way of refusing to discuss sexual politics, but in the case of the VCB story, her answer truly reflects the romantic situation that Johansson’s open-minded character slips naturally into, without any need to analyse it.

Ultimately, Christina’s destructive view of love gets the better of her – an approach Johansson finds anathema in real life: ‘I think the line in the movie is “only unfulfilled love can be romantic”. God. I’ve never strived for something that wasn’t available or full. The idea that romance can only come from something unrequited is sad. I think the most romantic love is seeing two people who have been together 40 or 50 years and are still excited to see that person come home.’
Johansson says she learned romance from her mother, was greatly influenced by her older sister, and loves ‘hanging out with girls. I love women’. She spends a lot of time with her grandmother when she’s in New York.

Brought up in Manhattan, she remembers queueing with her parents as a child to see Woody Allen’s movies and thought that working for him would be the ultimate. After she shot to prominence in Lost in Translation (2003), her most significant film after the subsequent Girl With A Pearl Earring (also 2003) was her key role in Woody Allen’s Match Point (2005). Now, having helped spark interest in his films again, she is regarded as his cinematic muse.

At just 24 years of age, she says she feels that her career is in a transition phase, as she moves from playing ‘the girlfriend’ or the sexy muse to, hopefully, roles with more gravitas – though she claims that she sees precious few scripts offering such material. It will be interesting to see which way Johansson’s career goes. Perhaps if she wants to escape being typecast as the busty blonde with the pillow lips, she should start to take some real risks at this point. Woody Allen has described her as an actress whom he regards as ‘capable of anything’, which she finds ‘the highest compliment’.
This has yet to be tested, however, especially by Woody, and one feels that perhaps saying bye-bye to her cosy relationship with him would be a good move for her right now. Imagining Johansson subsuming her tabloid label as ‘Hollywood Hottie’ in order to act as a serial killer, a Nazi or troubled intellectual, for example, requires a leap. Vicky Christina Barcelona is, after all, just another fun romp – with a twist.

There is a four-minute video on YouTube that is just a montage of TV clips of Johansson laughing, all lips, hair and cleavage, set against a soundtrack trilling, ‘mystical, magical, so beautiful...’ in place of her own voice. She didn’t put it there, of course, but perhaps – at just under a quarter of a decade old – she doesn’t fully realise what an uphill struggle she has against objectification, if she truly wants to overcome it, and how she is hindering herself with her choice of roles (including by claiming she has no choice).

If Johansson wants to be the next Charlize Theron or Kate Winslet she is going to have to take much bigger risks with her image. Then we’ll see whether she has the acting smarts to match.
And if she wants to be accepted as a friend of the lesbian and gay community, she’s going to have to work a lot harder off-screen, and take a few risks there, too.