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L'AUBERGE ESPAGNOLE Send This Review to a Friend
Writer-director Cédric Klapisch has a gift for combining comedy with observations about characters placed in a particular environment, in this case crowded Barcelona living quarters inhabited by a melange of students trying to find themselves. The story is built mainly around a 25-year-old Parisian named Xavier, who has arranged to spend his senior year studying in Spain as a way of getting a job in the economic world thanks to strings pulled in his behalf. Much of the film is amusing, although Xavier and some of the others become somewhat boring and the film runs on too long for its own good.
Xavier, played earnestly by Romain Duris, leaves a girlfriend back in Paris, portrayed by the very busy star Audrey Tautou, and her whining about their disintegrating relationships gets on one's nerves. Tautou isn't very appealing here. More interesting is Anne Sophie (Judith Godrèche), the frustrated, shy married woman whom Xavier meets on arrival. As an affair develops between them, she becomes most striking. Also special is Isabelle (Cécile de France), the lesbian roommate in the living quarters shared by students. There is a funny and quite erotic scene in which she instructs Xavier on how to sexually satisfy a woman. After all, she should know.
The film mixes Barcelona atmosphere, a range of international characters, romance and elements of farce. Klapisch understands the problems of youth in student years and he is able to make much of the film enjoyable, and perhaps even remind people of their own student days, either as they existed or as wished for. But the romp does go on excessively. A Fox Searchlight Pictures release.
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