Buenos Aires is the closest thing Americans have to a Paris of the 1920s or a Prague of the 1990s. On a recent night out in New York, I heard four writers mention they were heading to Buenos Aires for a prolonged visit. The reasons are largely economic: In 2001, the Argentine economy collapsed, and the value of the peso went with it. The city is now very cheap for Americans, especially in contrast to Western Europe. A cup of coffee costs about 60 cents. A good bottle of wine at a nice restaurant is about $8. The atmosphere is cosmopolitan: Many of the city's residents are descended from Italian and Spanish immigrants who came here in the late 19th century during the nation's first economic boom, at a moment when the government was especially welcoming to European migrants. Today's residents—known as porteños—are talkative and good-looking (if also enhanced with the aid of a surgeon's knife).

As cheap as it is, Buenos Aires is, relatively speaking, safe—unlike, say, Mexico City—and it looks, in a word, cinematic. This is due, no doubt, to its confluence of vastly different strains of architecture: an Italianate grand plaza, a colonial town hall, the beautiful Palermo parks, the fabulous Teatro Colón, and the Art Nouveau mansions and cafes of Recoleta. In Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together, about a gay couple who come to Buenos Aires from Hong Kong and Taiwan, the city looks nearly as stunning as Anna Karina in a Jean-Luc Godard film.