a delightful story with fascinating characters

Rating: 7/10 (20 October 2008)

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a story where emotions, intuitions, states of mind and feelings are experienced very strongly and expressed widely. The constant self-narration could be somehow disconcerting but the genius Allen provides a narrator (Christopher Evan Welch) committed to making sure that even the most distracting viewer will get everything and won't miss a thing. Vicky Cristina Barcelona has been rightly told to be the cinematic equivalent of a book on tape: a flick watching itself for you and telling/explaining all you see. The three heroines are three very attractive girls/women (Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz) that show chemistry together and prove very fit for their roles. After three English settings Allen has moved to Barcelona (new experiment), showing once more that a suitable filming location is extremely important for the film to be successful (in terms of the story standing up not in terms of audience).