Vicky Cristina Barcelona

PENÉLOPE CRUZ and WOODY ALLEN, The Odd Couple - One film together: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008): The archetypal Woody woman might be the over-educated, over-therapized yammerer—exemplified by Diane Keaton's characters in "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan"—but another type of woman has... more also recurred in his work: the smoldering, emotionally volatile knockout. Think of Charlotte Rampling in "Stardust Memories," Scarlett Johansson in "Match Point," or, from Allen's masterful short story "Retribution," the Wasp goddess Connie Chasen, possessed of a "lewd, humid eroticism" and a body "the envy of a Vogue model." In "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," Cruz takes on this assignment and then some—throwing in bits of Béatrice Dalle in "Betty Blue" and Emmanuelle Seigner in "Bitter Moon" for good measure. As María Elena, the tousled, pouty, impossibly sexy ex-wife of Javier Bardem's painter character, Cruz is a whirlwind of carnality and psychosis. "You are de meesing ingredient," she tells her ex's new lover, an American naïf played by Johansson. "I get thees warm feeling when I hear you both locked in passion every night." With Allen pulling the strings, you just know it's not going to end well.

Photographed by Annie Leibovitz at the Carlyle hotel, in New York City.