After the premiere of the film Frozen, Disney, in November 2013, Visit Norway experienced a 37% increase in hotel bookings in Norway compared to the same period of the previous year.
The success of Slumdog Millionaire in 2008 increased the rise of (controversial) poverty tourism in Indian cities like Mumbai, and the William Wallace Monument in Stirling (Scotland), recorded a 300% increase in tourists the year after the premiere of brave heart in 1995.
Cinema has always connected us to the world and he has made it more dreamy thanks to his many artifices: we all wanted to be Audrey Hepburn in black and white walking through the streets of Rome; kissing in Paris to the sound of La vie en rose played on the accordion, or brandishing the laser sword in distant African deserts. Somewhat more earthly fantasies that we can experience in the following ten places that we idealize thanks to the cinema.
LOMBARDY (ITALY): CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
The setting of a movie can be just as important as the story itself, and Call me by your name is a good example.
Luca Guadagnino's film took us to the province of Cremona of the Lombardy region, not far from Milan , where nature and art merged between peaches, ahem, more appetizing and refreshing pools where you can flirt without taking off your Ray Bans. and live in Villa Albergoni, the house where the romance between Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer) was born that summer of 1983 in which they danced in the town of Cream , found ancient statues in the lake garda and lived their love in bergamo.
And it is that never a place in the cinema of the past decade was beaten so much with the story it told.
Call me by your name.
PARIS FRANCE): AMELIE
When we thought that Paris could not be more idealized, came a young woman addicted to the photo booth and with the ability to talk to garden gnomes.
To the rhythm of the charming La Noyée by Yann Tiersen, the dreamer Amélie (Audrey Tautou) turned her search for love into the perfect excuse to rediscover a French capital where the Eiffel Tower was the least of it: in Jean Pierre Jeunet's film, the seedy area of Pigalle it was even romantic, sticking your hands in sacks of lentils a guilty pleasure and the Cafe Deux Moulins de Montmartre , a haven where coffee seemed cheaper.
Amélie and Paris.
LOS ANGELES (USA): LA LA LAND
Let's be frank: years ago, talking about Los Angeles was talking about an iconic city, yes, but bustling and lacking in stimuli past the Walk of Fame and the Hollywood Hills. At least for the inexperienced tourist.
The musical La La Land, Directed by Damien Chazelle arrived in 2016 to break down this prejudice and resurrect those great little charms of "the city of stars". The love story between Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) It was a sequence through places of neon lights and palm trees, pink skies and streets that today draw an irresistible route: perhaps in the freeway 110 drivers take advantage of a traffic jam to rehearse their next number, or on the dome of the Griffith Park Observatory two lovers dance before saying goodbye The Lighthouse Cafe.
La La Land.
VIENNA (AUSTRIA): BEFORE DAWN
You travel on an interrail in Europe and you meet a person by chance. You have a few hours together to explore the city and a kiss is the perfect ellipsis for long talks about life, love and sex. In 1995, a generation became voyeurs of the encounter on a train between American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), and his subsequent nocturnal walk through a city of Vienna that acted as a perfect ally of his history: from Kath Bloom singing come here in the record store Teuchtler Schallplaterrnhandlung, until that evening from the Prater Ferris wheel.
The perfect prelude to two other installments (Before sunset and Before sunset) turned into perfect emotional travel guides.
Love was born in Vienna…. before dawn.
TOKYO JAPAN): LOST IN TRANSLATION
Japan has been recreated in Western cinema in an always exuberant way: there we have the hanamachis of Kyoto in Memories of a Geisha or the lost temples of The last Samurai . However, Lost in translation went a step further when it came to deconstructing the city of Tokyo and turning it into a labyrinth as hermetic as it was beautiful.
The story of Bob Harris (Bill Murray), an old Hollywood glory come to less, and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), the lost wife of a young photographer. , between the cafes of his hotel and the karaoke bars of the city, was the perfect paradox of a West that traveled to the East to discover how lonely it was.
Get lost in translation and find yourself in Tokyo.
FORMENTERA (SPAIN): LUCIA AND SEX
Those of my generation knew that it existed a film starring Paz Vega where "everything" was seen. But in my case, seeing the movie for the first time Julius Medem It was a first approach to that dreamlike Formentera, as the best mystical link between reality and fiction.
Because you also wanted to feel the breeze on your thighs when pedaling your bike through the barbarian lighthouse , or dive into a cave that will transport you to another time. That, and being a guest of the Elena of Najwa Nimri for a day, sure.
Illetes beaches, in Formentera (Lucía and sex).
MEXICO: COCONUT
Disney and Pixar cinema has been for many our first window to the world: the town of Beauty and the Beast (which exists), Venezuelan waterfalls Whoops! either Simba's savannah in The Lion King . A unique ability that he exploits in more recent films like Coco, whose recreation of the Mexico of the Day of the Dead it was an ode to light and color.
And it is that we all wanted to be Mexicans for a day to ride our own altar full of cempasuchil flowers or tour towns like Saint Cecilia (main inspiration for the film), with its streets dotted with confetti flags.
Lights and shadows in Coco.
NEW YORK (USA): ANNIE HALL
That kiss by the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset between Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) and Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) was all that was right in the world back in 1977. The relationship of a young singer and a down-and-out comedian was the perfect excuse to tour a city of New York turned into the main spoiled girl of Allen's filmography.
At Annie Hall we were able to peek into her nightclubs, the queues at her theaters, the Annie's apartment on the Upper East Side and to all those little obvious places that made you want to move to the Big Apple. Sorry, Carrie.
New York (by Annie Hall) from above.
AGRA AND MUMBAI (INDIA): SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
The case of the Oscar winner in 2009 is curious, we would say rare: after the success of Danny Boyle's movie , a recreation of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist in India, the so-called slum tours or visits to slums achieved success rates that raised eyebrows in activist circles.
However, seen today, perhaps the idea of Slumdog Millionaire was not to sell us a made-up India, but to show that in the dark there is also color and music, hope and love . Even a Taj Mahal that we all wanted to know without our Nikes being stolen.
Slumdog Billionaire.
MATMATA DESERT (TUNISIA): STAR WARS
Star Wars, like other film sagas such as Harry Potter Y The Lord of the rings , toyed with the idea of making Earth a more epic and awesome place. In the saga of George Lucas, the Lake Como could be the most dreamy riding arena for Anakin and Amidala, and the Plaza of Spain in Seville the perfect parliamentary seat of Naboo.
Scenarios among which the troglodyte dwellings of the Tatooine desert and its pod races located in the desert of Matmata, in Tunisia.
Luke Skywalker on Tatooine.