Barbara Barbara Barcelona

Seeing Woody Allen’s new movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona reminded me of my own trip to that city with my friend also named Barbara just after we graduated from college. Ours was a somewhat different story although not without adventure.

In the movie, the two girls early on meet an artist (Javier Bardem) who immediately suggests that the three of them fly to a small city not far from Barcelona for a weekend of sex. “Life is short, dull, full of pain,” he says. Why not seize any opportunity for pleasure?

Vicky (Rebecca Hall) is bright, skeptical, cautious, and engaged to be married. Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) is more adventurous, but unattached and undirected in life.

The movie chronicles their individual affairs with the artist and the involvement of his crazed ex (Penelope Cruz).

The movie is all about the conflict between security and passion. Woody Allen leads the viewer to believe that happiness is elusive, but that life is actually much richer than one’s personal satisfaction.

Instead of meeting a Bohemian artist, while hitchhiking my friend Barbara and I met a lunatic who tried to kidnap us. As we started to drive up that mountain that looks so beautiful in Woody Allen’s movie, we realized we were doomed, especially as we saw empty baby food jars rolling around on the car floor. When the car slowed to a stop at one point, I yelled “Get out” and we opened the door and jumped out. Not without an effort on his part as he grabbed by friends shirt and tried to rip it off of her. We were terrified as we tried to figure out how to get back to the city. We ended up getting a ride in a park service truck and declared an end to hitchhiking.

The movie makes you think about lost opportunities that are gone forever. I remember one in particular when I was on a trip to Norway with my parents two years later. After breakfast in the home of a lovely family and only an hour before we were to leave for the airport, the son who looked like a Norwegian god suggested we go out in the nearby field and make passionate love. I winced as I declined. Was it because I knew he was engaged to the mother of his child? Was it because I had already become somewhat committed to the man I would marry? I’ll never know. But it’s a scene that has been played out in my head a few times since then. Seizing the moment is something that comes hard for many of us.

I did find myself wondering which of the characters I would have been most like if we had met such an artist in Barcelona.