untitled
L'AUBERGE ESPAGNOLE
Directed by: Cédric
Klapisch
Internet Movie
Database Entry for full details
GRADE: B (2.7/4)
2002.
Romain
Duris and Audrey Tatou, two of the most charismatic, appealing, and
talented young actors working in France today, are marketed as the
stars of the film; not only that, they play a romantic couple
– could anything be more alluring and potentially
arousing? In actuality, however, Tatou’s role is
minimal, but that’s OK; contrary to the beliefs of the
tote-bag carting crowd, she is not the be-all end-all of contemporary
French cinema. The film is an ensemble piece, with Duris at
the main; everyone is exceptionally well cast and delivers.
Duris plays Xavier, a Parisian facing a quarter-life crisis of scant
employment opportunity. On the advice of a family friend, he
goes to Barcelona to study economics through Erasmus, a European
student-exchange program; he finds housing in an eccentrically
multi-cultured apartment with a representative from most of the major
European nations. This probably plays as a much better joke
outside of the States; after all, how amusing would a Belgian find it
to see a Texan, a Nebraskan, an Oregonian, and a Massachusettesian live
together?
The narrative structure is episodic, and therein lies the film's
downfall. Despite that the film is often funny, and
occasionally emotionally involving thanks to Duris’
performance, as many times it is not. As James Agee wrote
about The Al Jolson
Story, “it is…nearly as hard to
separate the pleasant from the boring as to get the cream out of
homogenized milk.” The pacing drags along far too
laboriously – about an hour into the film I looked at my
watch to discover the only twenty minutes had actually passed.
-- Henry Stewart
Read our review of Russian Dolls, the sequel.
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