Woody Allen’s ‘Love Letter to Barcelona’

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

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Woody 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.”

Tags: Pop Culture Travel, Europe, Spain, News and Briefs

Eva Holland is the senior editor of World Hum. Her writing has also appeared in Reader's Digest Canada, NationalGeographic.com, the National Post, the Montreal Gazette, the Ottawa Citizen and WestJet's Up! Magazine, among other publications. She's based in Canada's Yukon territory.


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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