Good review. A couple of thoughts: Your point about Vicky's inability to speak Spanish is well-taken. She does suggest that she _reads_ Spanish well, so it's not implausible for her to have done the kind of academic work described in the film. I recall from my college days a number of graduate students in the modern languages departments who were terrifically smart but not actively/orally fluent in the language of their chosen culture. I think that's a function of how legendarily bad we Americans are at learning to speak foreign languages, even after we spend years studying them (mea culpa!). That said, I tend to agree that, given Vicky's particular subject, it seems unlikely she wouldn't have at least some active fluency in Spanish and/or Catalan, because how could one meaningfully study something as fundamental as Catalan identity without being able to interact with the natives in the language that is absolutely central to their cultural and political identity, particularly given the attempts to stifle the use of Catalan under Franco and other regimes? Furthermore, in addition to not speaking the language, you don't get much of a sense that Vicky knows/understands much about Catalan culture generally, with the exception of her professed admiration of Gaudi's architecture. So why not turn her into an architecture student? Or art history? That way, you'd have the contrast between the prim/proper art history academic and her friend, the tempestuous artist. Who knows -- maybe it was a way for Allen to poke fun at American intellectuals who not only don't speak foreign languages after they study them but also have only the most superficial understanding of cultures they profess expertise about. I disagree with you about Vicky's fiance. He isn't an ogre, precisely, but he is portrayed (rather heavy-handedly) as a prototypical bourgeois stiff who you couldn't imagine anyone going back to happily after being seduced by Javier Bardem's character. And what you perceived as his romantic spontaneity I saw as evidence (along with his many phone calls to Vicky) of his unattractive neediness. Some of the professional critics took Allen to task for creating such a cartoonishly dweebish counterpoint to Bardem's Mediterranean sensuality, and I can't say I disagree with them.