During the mid-90s, I watched the film Barcelona with a friend. Loved it. The film was set even earlier -- in the late 80s, when the Soviet Empire still existed and when anti-Americanism was all the rage (literally) in Spain -- not to mention other segments of Europe.

There is this narrative that the US was well-loved in Europe. And that the Bush presidency -- either in toto or simply post-9/11 -- has squandered that sizeable pool of goodwill.

Hogwash.

If someone you know thinks that, tell them to watch Barcelona. And especially, on the DVD, the deleted scenes. It's a cute movie, a funny movie, a bit of a romantic comedy, and yet also a very interesting and thoughtful movie. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

And if you've seen it before, as I have, consider re-watching it. What it has to say about European anti-Americanism is as, if not more, relevant today than it was back when the film was released.

I'd love to tell you more about the movie, but to do so is to spoil it, and I really mean it seriously when I suggest you take the time to watch it. But I'll bring out two or three things which caught my attention...

(1) The characters encounter some of the same slurs I've heard from my French friends. Innocent bigotries like: "You're very smart for an American." (In my case, followed up by, "You're more like a European.") (Yes, when God handed out all the intelligence, he shipped it first to Europe, then to the Kerry-supporting states, and after that scraped the bottom of the barrel to give some to Bush-supporting states.)

And in fact it is many of the anti-Americans who can't keep their facts straight, as one does when he propounds about the "AFL-CIA" a "right-wing" labor union.

This is perhaps too cheap an example, but yet how much like life, where French leaders like Chirac are regarded as "moral" and "principled" for the double-stance they took on Iraq before the war, and it is Bush and our allies who are portrayed as bribed and sold out to crass financial gain. And yet the French media remain almost entirely mute on many of the motivating factors behind Chirac's duplicity.

And at each point in Barcelona, the Americans' failure to agree with the leftist European view is construed as a prima facia sign of ignorance, before contrary evidence is even heard.

(2) Fred, the sailor, walks around in uniform, and is called "fachia" (facist) frequently. But, though he plays the token role of the ugly American, he makes a valid point: Men wearing his uniform died to liberate these people from facism. That uniform stood for opposing facism.

Fred has given up and risked his life to protect Europe from Soviet aggression. As a result, the Spanish (and of course many other Europeans) are safe enough to indulge in a fantasy that no such threat exists, and that NATO is a nefarious American plot to control their country. (It's not clear why Spain is supposed to be of such crucial geopolitical importance.)

And yet, this prattle is deeply unserious, and some of the characters even know it. When one character, who waxes grandly on purported American crime and obesity, is asked: "When you were in Rhode Island, was it really all that bad?" she turns away and has nothing to say. She knows it isn't true.

(3) At one point, one of the characters offers this analogy of the US: To the rest of the world, the United States is like an ant farm -- a toy bought for children so that they can see how ants build a society and interact. Only you can't see directly into the ant farm, you have to trust other people to describe it to them. And the people who describe the ant farm... don't like ants.

Bingo.

I'm a bit slow. Certainly, anti-Americanism has been on the rise. But, in studying and reading the international press, I'm realizing that -- and isn't this precisely the leftist narrative? -- that people simply react to the information they receive. And that information, including from our own press, has a profoundly anti-American slant to it.

This is a terrible review. The film deserves better than that. It's not the world's most fantastic film, but it's quite good -- better than I remembered. As a friend of mine commented, it works on many levels. And very prescient...

At one point, in the extra material on the DVD, the director is saying he's showing it to Rob Reiner, who is insisting that anti-Americanism is nothing like what's shown in the fim. But a very left-leaning actress who's present says no, she's been there recently, and it's exactly what it's like in the film.

And mind you, the film was set in the 80s, and the actress made this comment in the early 90s. So nothing has fundamentally changed, though the volume and tenor has undoubtedly increased.

Do watch it.