| L'Auberge Espagnole | |
|---|---|
French theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Cédric Klapisch |
| Produced by | Bruno Levy |
| Written by | Cédric Klapisch |
| Starring | Romain Duris Judith Godrèche Audrey Tautou |
| Music by | Various Artists |
| Cinematography | Dominique Colin |
| Editing by | Francine Sandberg |
| Distributed by | Fox Searchlight Pictures (USA, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Asia, Scandinavia ) |
| Release date(s) | 17 May 2002 |
| Running time | 122 minutes |
| Country | France Spain |
| Language | French Spanish English Catalan Danish German Italian |
| Budget | € 5,010,000 |
| Box office | € 24,370,575 |
L'Auberge Espagnole (literally: "the Spanish inn", released in some English-speaking territories as Pot Luck or The Spanish Apartment) is a 2002 French film directed and written by Cédric Klapisch. It is about Xavier (Romain Duris), an economics graduate student studying for a year in Barcelona, Spain as part of the Erasmus programme, where he encounters and learns from a group of students who hail from all over Western Europe.
The film's portrayal is in the first-person perspective of the main character, Xavier, and is hence mainly narrated in French. Some of the dialogue is in English however, and a significant amount is in Spanish, as well as small amounts in Catalan, Danish, German and Italian.
The film has a sequel, The Russian Dolls.
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The story follows Xavier (Romain Duris), a 24 year old Frenchman, who leaves his girlfriend (Audrey Tautou) and his country for the ERASMUS programme in Barcelona, a prerequisite for a job with the French government. On the flight over, he meets a young "uncool" French couple (Anne-Sophie, the wife) who let him stay in their flat while he searches for a place to stay. Xavier manages to find an apartment with other people from all around Europe, including England, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Denmark with whom he becomes good friends. His girlfriend visits him but leaves sad. Xavier eventually has an affair with the wife (Anne-Sophie) of the French neurologist with whom he has been showing the city. One of his roommates, Wendy from London, has a visiting brother named William who is quite abrasive and rude, resulting in some funny dialogues. Xavier's girlfriend has an affair and breaks up with him over the telephone. Xavier becomes somewhat depressed and asks his friend the neurologist for help. Anne-Sophie tells her husband about the affair and he tells Xavier not to see his wife again. Then Wendy has an affair with an American, but her boyfriend Alister makes a surprise visit and William pretends that the American is actually his lover. At the end of the film, Xavier returns to Paris and gets the job at the Ministry but runs away on his first day at work and becomes a writer.
The meaning of the story is based on Erasmus' famous essay The Praise of Folly which discusses the superiority of folly over conventional wisdom.
This movie is a co-production between Spain and France. L'Auberge Espagnole is a very common french expression, which originally meant a place where you can only eat what you bring. By extension, it applies to various matters, especially the field of philosophical, political or religious ideas, which are vague enough to permit everyone to make them mean what he wants. Using it in the title of the film, is first a Franco-Spanish semantic "clin d'œil", probably not without derision, but which leads to interpret the term in the much more positive and friendly sens of "carrefour des idées" resulting of the confrontation of personalities and cultures, within a framework of freedom.
L'Auberge espagnole features a diverse soundtrack, which includes:
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