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L'Auberge Espagnole

Romain Duris and Audrey Tautou in L'Auberge Espagnole.

FILM FACTS

Starring: Romain Duris and Audrey Tautou
Director: Cédric Kaplisch
Rating: R for language, sexuality and marijuana smoking
Language: In French, English and Spanish, with subtitles
Genre: Comedy, Romance, Foreign

Discuss this film | Official movie site

See showtimes (R) 116 minutes

Grade: B

Verdict: The original title, "Euro Pudding," gives a better idea of this film's frothy, internationally themed good humor.

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In "L'Auberge Espagnole," a bunch of students are crammed into a tiny apartment in beautiful Barcelona.

Another installment of "The Real World?" Nope. This film is fiction, and it's a lot more enjoyable than watching a bunch of 15-minutes-of-famers jostle for camera time.

Xavier (Romain Duris) is a recent college grad who, like Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate," has no idea what to do next. A business friend of his father's has one word for him. Not "plastics," but "Spanish." To compete in the brave new economic world of the European Union, he'll need some language skills.

Leaving his pouty girlfriend (Audrey Tautou) behind in Paris, Xavier enrolls in an exchange program in Barcelona. After a few false starts, he lands in a comfortably disheveled, borderline pig-sty apartment with a definite Olympic Village ambience. The occupants come from England, Italy, Spain, Germany, Denmark and Belgium.

Along with Spanish and economic policy, Xavier learns some life lessons. He gets involved with a married woman, gets invaluable sex tips from a lesbian pal and experiences the kind of once-in-a-lifetime bonding that happens when you're grown up but not yet an adult.

The movie is partly autobiographical. Director Cédric Kaplisch ("When the Cat's Away") drew on his own experiences as a graduate student at New York University, where he studied film. No wonder it has an affectionate "remember-the-time-when-we . . . " tone.

Kaplisch is also interested in using his communal crash pad as an optimistic microcosm of an integrated Europe. Kids share space with other kids whose grandparents tried to kill their grandparents. Amusingly, the British student is the only one who doesn't speak another language, reflecting, perhaps, England's ambivalence about a united Europe. (Remember, they still haven't embraced the euro currency.)

The movie can get schematic; Klapisch repeats his political message more than is needed, employing gentle stereotypes -- efficient German, lazy Italian -- to point out outmoded clichés that matter less and less as different countries come together.

The picture is much more appealing when it deals on a personal level: the roomies bickering about refrigerator space or uniting to save one of them from an unexpected visit by an old boyfriend who doesn't yet know about the new boyfriend.

Kaplisch's frisky camera techniques -- split screens, speeded-up action, etc. -- give the movie a 1960s feel, as do the students' casual dope smoking and anti-establishment attitude.

The plot isn't much; it meanders from one focal point to another, and sometimes interesting subplots simply dry up. Yet that looseness is also a key to the movie's appeal. Whether you're a frat guy from the '50s or live in a 21st-century coed dorm, "L'Auberge Espagnole's" celebration of a certain time, a certain place, a certain community is engagingly recognizable.