Vicky Cristina Barcelona - 2008

Vicky Cristina Barcelona successfully looks at how human emotions can overtake even the most rational aspirations.

Filmed on location in Barcelona, Spain, it uses an exotic summer vacation to explore the issues of life choices, true love and finding contentment. In this production two girlfriends, Vicki and Cristina, spend a long summer in Barcelona where they unexpectedly encounter a local artist who suddenly invites the girls with him for a free-wheeling weekend.

Cristina is impulsive and always searching for new experiences because she specifically does not know what she really wants out of life. Engaged to be married in the Fall to a successful New York City buisnessman, Vicky is the opposite personality -- organized, coordinated and planned.

Vicky sleeps with Juan Antonio, but backs off so that Cristina can have an affair with him. In the midst of this, Juan Antonio's ex wife appears, taking Cristina into a three-way romantic relationship, which is one of many instances where a third person triggers the others into something new.

The film also explores the use of three people in one relationship. Repeatedly, a third person enables the other two to go places and do things which they otherwise would not do.

Ultimately, Christina cannot handle the emotions of her relationship, not because of moral objections, but rather it seems she grows bored and dissatisfied.

The film is ultimately a commentary on satisfaction as well as a philosophical reading of how one's feelings are in conflict with intellectual thought. Although Allen has often used these subjects in his movies, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is his best film to show characters making choices in life, and how sacrifice and logic compete with art and beauty in their ultimate decisions.