Vicky Cristina Barcelona Sountrack

by Chris Devonshire-Ellis


December 8th, 2008


I’m a big Woody Allen fan, and his last film, featuring Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem, shot in Barcelona, was a delightful farce, in typical Allen style with a lot of comedy but also tragedy thrown in for good measure. With actors like that, and a city like Barcelona, you really can’t go wrong. Allen is also noted for his use of great music in his films, usually classical or jazz, but for this he enlisted a whole bunch of Spanish flavored tracks, many obscure – and it hasn’t been out of my cd player for weeks. The title track, "Barcelona" by Guilio Y Los Tellarini is a teasing, flirtatious flamenco cum bossa nova, and makes a fine standard – check it out on Youtube. Of the others, most are contemporary flamenco guitar pieces – has any music ever been so romantic ? Of which my personal favorite is the third track,  "Entre Don Aguas" by Paco De Lucia, which begins life as a mournful, slow samba but perks up with a bullfighters bravado and ends up with those fingers popping and feet tapping. It may well be the twilight of Allens movie career, but the man sure knows how to put compliation CD’s together.