Squeeze in boys from France, Italy, Germany and Denmark and girls from England, Belgium, and Tarragona into a cramped apartment to witness the cultural differences of six roommates in a foreign program in Barcelona, Spain. The movie L’auberge Espagnole (The Spanish Apartment) was the first French film shown on campus.
What is awesome about college is that students have the opportunity to study in a different country. College and university students do not necessarily have to study abroad to relate with the film. People room with strangers and at times it is difficult to live with them. Sharing a refrigerator with six roommates can be a pain. For one, you can’t eat others’ food and there is a limitation of refrigerator space.
In the movie, the refrigerator was packed with drinks and food. Also, there exist the messy and dirty roommates who leave empty soda cans and chip bags laying everywhere and the unwashed dishes in the sink.
On the other hand, there is the roommate who is the neat freak of the group. They always want the place spotless clean, and they get after the other people to help maintain the cleanness of the apartment.
Xavier (Romain Duris) is a French student who applied for a year’s graduate school in Barcelona, Spain. The director and writer Cedric Klapisch introduced the movie by showing Xavier the hassle he had to go through with paperwork before he can get accepted to the program. The movie adds the speed up effects to the character Xavier when he was sent from place to place to get the application forms done. Doesn’t the process sound familiar?
Xavier left behind a girlfriend in Paris. How many people have left behind loved ones to study in a different city? In this case, he fell for another woman (Judith Godrèche) who was taken by a guy who helped him at the beginning of his trip to Spain. The woman was ignored and suppressed by her husband. Xavier took her out a couple of times. Their friendship reached new heights.
This movie could be compared to the show “Real World” from MTV. There are people from different parts of the United States with different ethnical background, race, gender and sexual orientation.
A new mix was later added to the diversity of the film. How can one person experience the diversity in the real world without meeting a homosexual? A Belgium lesbian, Isabelle (Cécile de France), moved in with the roommates. She taught Xavier how to win the married woman’s heart. The drama, heartache and reconciliations could be found on both the French film and “The Real World.”
Understanding the French movie was not a problem. The subtitles helped viewers to understand the plot, characters, settings, climax and solutions to the film. The languages Spanish, Catalan, English and French were spoken in some scenes of the movie.
The movie showed the differences in languages. For example, when Xavier’s mother called, the British girl, Wendy (Keilly Reilly), answered the phone. Wendy had no clue to as what the French mother was saying. Wendy got offended when she heard the “F” word from Xavier’s mother, only to find out that the word is equivalent to university. Still not pronouncing the word university in French correctly, she used the “F” word in certain scenes to tell the others she was off to the university campus, thus adding comedy to the movie.
Overall, the film offers drama, breakups, make-ups, passion and lust but mostly laughter. This movie definitely deserves two thumbs up!