To Barcelona, With Love is part of the Hallmark Channel’s Passport to Love collection of films that are shot on location, usually in some gorgeous European city. This one, set in Spain (obviously), stars two of the channel’s most successful stars, Ashley Williams and Alison Sweeney, in a tale where Sweeney’s character, Erica, the more poetic of the two, tries to help Williams’ character Anna fall in love with a man that Erica has secretly loved for years but has never been able to properly show it. From the scenery to the friendship that develops between the two women, the film is a dreamy, charming summer vacation romance that inspires wanderlust.
Opening Shot: We’re in Barcelona, Spain. Aerial shots of the beaches and skyline give way to a woman named Erica (Alison Sweeney) walking out of a café. She spots another café-goer reading a romance novel called Barcelona, Mi Amor and asks her how it is. The woman says it’s the best book she’s ever read and Erica seems shocked but happy.
The Gist: Ashley Williams plays a romance novelist named Anna Kelly, the author of Barcelona, Mi Amor. It’s her second novel, and it’s getting panned by American critics and readers who are calling it inauthentic, written by someone who’s never even been to Barcelona (which is true). Ironically, the one place that the book is a smash hit is Barcelona.
Anna is invited to Barcelona by a bookseller named Nico (Alejandro Tous) for Sant Jordi Day, the annual holiday known as the Day of Books and Roses, to sign books and meet her adoring Spanish fans. Nico loves this book, even declaring his love for Anna, because her words are so beautiful. All of this causes Erica to spiral. She’s an American living in Spain and working as a translator, and unbeknownst to anyone, she did the Spanish-language translation of Anna’s book and, well, it seems she took some creative liberties with the translation – she’s the reason it’s so popular in Spain. She filled it with details and prose that made it better.
Nico, who is Erica’s friend/longtime crush, doesn’t know any of this because she signed an NDA so she can’t publicly reveal that she translated the book and teh words he finds so moving are actually hers. So when he asks Erica to help be a guide for Anna while she’s visiting Barcelona, Erica panics. She doesn’t want Anna – or Nico – to know she made changes to the book, it would destroy her career. Unfortunately, once Anna realizes that the Spanish-language book contains details she definitely did not write, it forces Erica to come clean to her. And while Anna is shocked by this, it also forces her to question whether she’s actually a good writer, and she starts to wonder whether she should really be here promoting her book that’s a fraud. Anna, a hopeless romantic, decides that fate brought her to Spain not for professional reasons, but to find love… with Nico.
Erica kind of hates this entire situation – to her credit, Alison Sweeney plays Erica as a cynic and a realist, she’s a stark contrast to Williams’ always-upbeat, life-loving Anna. (Anna’s zest for food and fun makes her even more appealing to Nico as well as all the locals, she starts to make friends everywhere she goes, especially at the local restaurants.) After visiting a number of restaurants, Anna starts to write a food blog and finds her true calling, but she has promised Nico she’ll write an original short story for the Sant Jordi Day celebration his bookstore is hosting.
Anna asks Erica for help writing the story, and from there, a deceptive web is woven even further, with Nico none the wiser and both women struggling to define and own their true creative voice and find a way to come clean to him. Meanwhile, Erica loves Nico, and it’s clear Nico loves her back, but he also finds Anna refreshing for her honestly and joie de vivre. Though a true love triangle never truly gets off the ground, there’s enough tension between the three to sustain the film and make you wonder how Erica will eventually find a way to show Nico her real feelings.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? After Erica agrees to help Anna write a story in Spanish to impress Nico, the two women joke that this is starting to sounds like the movie Roxanne, based on Cyrano de Bergerac.
Our Take: While a lot of Hallmark’s Passport to Love films are shot on location and incorporate the setting into the story, To Barcelona, With Love might be one of the most successful because it truly integrates all aspects of Catalan culture into the film. (Maybe it’s because I have a soft spot for Barcelona, but seeing even seemingly small details, like Anna swooning over patatas bravas, or larger moments like lingering shots of the Sagrada Familia and La Boqueria, really feel like the film is dependent on its location in a good way, it’s really beautiful to see the sights.)
Even the Cyrano/Roxanne plot, which has obviously been done before, is done well thanks mostly to Sweeney’s performance as a reluctant poet, feeding Anna the right things to say via text or on paper. Of course Erica is jealous and doesn’t like setting up Nico with someone else, but because she loves Nico so much, she does it because she wants to see Nico happy. While she and Anna are positioned as opposites, the love-hate friendship that develops (that eventually just becomes a true friendship) is also an entertaining dynamic, one I look forward to seeing more of in the follow-up film To Barcelona, Forever, out later this month.
Parting Shot: “Maybe you can help me with one last translation. Te amo,” Nico tells Erica. “I love you, too, Nico,” she responds, and they kiss.
Performance Worth Watching: Mateo (Javier Santos), Erica’s Spanish BFF, reminds me of Rupert Everett’s scene stealing role in My Best Friend’s Wedding: painfully handsome, always equipped with a funny retort, and worthy of his own spin-off.
Memorable Dialogue: “I really thought at this point I’d be living like a Nancy Meyers character. In the Hamptons, with my beautiful desk overlooking the ocean,” Anna tells Erica when she laments that she’s not as successful as she had hoped she’d be by now. SAME, GIRL.
Our Call: STREAM IT. To Barcelona, With Love is not just a vicarious way to experience a great city (although it is very much that), it’s a well-plotted romance that gets the audience invested not just in the love triangle between Anna, Erica and Nico, but in the friendships that grow between them, too.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.