L’Auberge
Espagnole, which either means The
Spanish Hotel or Euro Pudding (depending on who you listen to), is way closer to being a Real World movie than The
Real Cancun was. Actually, if you were able to mate MTV’s groundbreaking
reality show with Lukas Moodysson’s Swedish communal comedy Together, you’d end up with something a
lot like Espagnole. Or possibly like
Rachel Dratch’s Saturday Night Live character with the arm growing out of its head — it’s difficult to say for
sure.

            The film’s central character is
Xavier (Romain Duris), a Parisian who is told by a connected friend of his
father’s that he’ll find a wide-open job market once he acquires a detailed
knowledge of Spanish economics. Eager to take the advice, Xavier enrolls in the
Erasmus program (a kind of a European foreign exchange plan) and heads for the
University of Barcelona, leaving behind his clingy, hippie mother (Lise
Lamitrie) and possessive, weepy girlfriend Martine (Audrey Tautou).

            Finding his original housing
situation far less than ideal, Xavier temporarily shacks up with a French
neurologist (Xavier De Guillebon) he met on his flight. As an added bonus, he
gets to hang out with the doctor’s incredibly hot but non-French-speaking wife,
Anne-Sophie (Judith Godrhche), when he’s not attending classes. Eventually,
Xavier lands in a cramped apartment he shares with delegates from most of the
European Union (a Brit, a Dane, an Italian, a German, a Spaniard, and a
Belgian). It’s like The Real World Europe,
on account of everybody being disgustingly attractive and having both petty
love problems and zero energy. Except there are about a half-dozen languages
being thrown around here, instead of just the English and Ebonics on RW. Oh, and dig the physical resemblance
between Wendy’s visiting brother and Real
World: Back to New York‘s Mike, who are both ignorant but well-meaning
xenophobes.

            One of writer-director Cidric
Klapisch’s (When the Cat’s Away)
underlying themes in Espagnole is the
effect of the homogenization of Europe, a point made very clear in a scene
where one of Xavier’s teachers insists on delivering his lectures in Catalan,
instead of traditional Spanish. Klapisch, who shot the film using
high-definition DV, based the story on his own very similar experiences in the
Erasmus program. And without that real-life understanding we probably wouldn’t
be treated to nice little touches, like the chart next to the communal phone
with flags and translations for the phrase “He’s not here right now.”

            Despite being nominated for six
César awards and winning one (Cécile de France for Most Promising Actress),
there are some fairly glaring flaws in Espagnole.
The characters are very stereotypical, despite the attempts to deny that fact
in the film’s press notes. Xavier narrates parts of the story but the narration
vanishes for long stretches of time. You could say the same thing about
Klapisch’s nearly over-the-top visuals, which dominate Espagnole‘s first 10 minutes and begin to make him seem like Jeunet
Lite, then practically disappear. The overall effect is a bit rambling and
unfocused, but you could almost be distracted by the beauty of Barcelona and
pretty much every character in the film. (I’ve pledged my undying love for Amélie‘s Tautou a number of times, and
she’s probably the fourth most attractive actress here.) The hip soundtrack
ranges from Radiohead to Ali Farka Touri.

Former film
critic Bertrand Tavernier’s latest, which screens at the Dryden Theatre this Friday
evening, depicts an interesting period in French cinema. That statement may
cause most people to assume Safe Conduct is about the
much-heralded French New Wave, but this film focuses on what it was like to
work in the Parisian motion picture industry during the years of German
occupation.

            There are two main characters in Conduct, and the most interesting is
Jean Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin), a former cycling pro who reluctantly accepts
an assistant-director gig at Continental Films and becomes a
propaganda-producing German collaborator… Or is he really using his
credentials (the film’s title, Laissez-Passer,
refers to a “safe conduct” pass that allowed Devaivre to freely roam
the streets) to aid the French Resistance and stash his family safely out in
the country?

            On the opposite end of the spectrum
is Jean Aurenche (Denis Podalydès), a stubborn screenwriter who refuses to work
“with” the Germans and still finds clever ways to sneak his own
anti-Nazi messages past censors and into his scripts. He’s also a womanizer,
constantly on the move between a married actress (Charlotte Kady), a flophouse
floozy (Marie Gillain), and a contemporary in the industry (Maria Pitarresi)
while living out of two shabby suitcases.

            The double Silver Bear winner in
Berlin features an epic-sized cast (there are as many speaking roles here as in
Russian Ark) as well as a streak of
dark humor which is, at times, a little off-putting. There are plenty of inside
jokes for viewers intimately familiar with period French cinema (or at least
that’s what I’ve been told). The story is actually based on a book written by
the real Devaivre, who collaborated with the real Aurenche, who worked with the
real Tavernier when his career was getting started. Alain Choquart’s camera
barely stops moving, portraying both the turmoil of the time and giving Conduct a perpetual sense of urgency,
which, for a film that takes nearly three hours to unspool, is both funny and
irritating.

Interested
in raw, unsanitized movie ramblings from Jon? Visit his site, Planet Sick-Boy (www.sick-boy.com),
or listen to him on WBER’s Friday Morning Show.

This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2003.