Woody Allen’s ‘Love Letter to Barcelona’

Travel Blog  •  Eva Holland  •  08.14.08 | 10:51 AM ET

imageWoody Allen’s latest film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, opens this weekend. The Globe and Mail’s Gayle MacDonald caught a sneak peek, then headed to the Spanish city to see whether Allen got his depiction of the Catalan capital right. Her verdict, after a few days spent wandering in Barcelona?

“The film certainly mines a number of tourist clichés. There are close-ups of the Gaudi church I climbed up, shots of Las Ramblas and enough scenes of the teeming Mercat de la Boqueria to make world-weary viewers choke on their cava,” she writes. “But then Allen takes those postcard images further. He gets that Barcelona is joyously heterodox. It’s a place where relationships can’t be contained by mere etiquette. Dinner and evening strolls are rarely before 10 p.m. And guidebook stops aren’t just a safe flirtation with foreignness—they can be opening lines for deeper seductions.”

Related on World Hum:
* ‘A Late Dinner: Discovering the Food of Spain’
* “Barcelona was Perfect!”

Tags: Europe, Spain, Pop Culture Travel

Eva Holland is a contributor to the World Hum blog. She is also a contributing editor at the Matador Network and at Not Coming to a Theater Near You, and a regular contributor to the Ottawa Citizen. Based in Ottawa, Canada, she loves to write about travel, history, sports, and culture high or low.


2 Comments for Woody Allen’s ‘Love Letter to Barcelona’

Kate T. 08.14.08 | 10:09 PM ET

I wonder how Scarlet Johansson manages to keep up with her talented co-stars in the film.

Ling 08.14.08 | 11:50 PM ET

Dunno about Barcelona, but whenever I see Woody Allen yapping away, I feel like stuffing a sock in his face.

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