Rating: 
Summary: Fun, frivolous, Euro-Friends froth
Review: This film is a lot of fun. Basically "Friends" in a Euro setting. It's a bit more "coming of age" story than your average episode of Friends (read: slightly deeper), and the visuals are more attractive than Friends' NY apartment. So, I'd recommend it as a good date movie. There are however major chunks of political Euro-correctness that (happily) will be missed by most Yank viewers (The Catalan language discussion, identity politics preaching, Erasmus as euro-intellectual, etc.), and the film's happy ending has little to do with the hijinks at the Spanish apartment in Barcelona. The suggestion is that somehow the largely (superficial and shallow) sexual exploits in Barcelona helped our protagonist discover his inner-artist (writer) and avoid the marriage plus EC-bureaucrat path he was originally on. The characters are interesting (at least those that are more developed), but most are little more that cardboard cut-outs filling a role rather than manifesting a personality. And none are any deeperer than Ross, Rachel, Chandler, Monica, Phoebe, or Joey (In fact, the one American --- a.k.a. "stupid American" -- in the flick may actually be Joey. This too seems to be part of the film's Euro-polictical anti-American correctness.) It's a fun movie, but it ain't as deep or psychologically insightful as it wants to be --- or would like the viewer to think it is. Still, it beats most of the fare available at your local Blockbusters. So give it a go, y'all!
Rating: 
Summary: Get over yourselves...
Review: ...you prudes who worry about the lead character's supposed lack of scruples. This is a delightful comedy about living abroad and learning about yourself and others. Anyone who has had the experience will recognize some small part of their own growth.
Rating:
Summary: I loved this movie
Review: I really don't have much to say besides that. I've been to Barcelona, and the movie made me want to go back and live there as Xavier had. It was just an enjoyable movie to watch and fall in love with.
Rating:
Summary: captures the thrill of travel abroad
Review: This film took me back to college days, to traveling overseas, to being thrown into situations with folks from other cultures, doing things I would never dream of doing now. I found it to be perfectly delightful, and the funniest film (in a laugh-out-loud way) I've seen in a long time. Xavier, the lead character, is a French student who is advised to learn Spanish in order for his father's friend to place him in a plum economics job in Paris. So, gullible & a little happless, Xavier grabs his backpack & dons his Levis, and marches off to Barcelona to study abroad in the Erasmus program. The first scenes in which Xavier is trying to navigate his way around Barcelona, struggling under the load of his luggage and his inability to speak Spanish, reminded me of the challenges of being a stranger in a strange land. Xavier eventually finds himself being interviewed for a space in a chaotic apartment shared by a Brit, an Italian, a Dane, a German and a Spaniard. More than anything, he wants to be accepted into this apartment, and ultimately, he is. During the course of the year, he takes seduction lessons from a lesbian woman in one of his courses, seduces a French physician's wife, seemingly forgets about his girlfriend Martine back home (Audrey Tautou), and then tries to reclaim her after she's broken up with him. The year abroad is so full of promise, excitement, learning (and he does, in fact, learn Spanish). After Xavier returns home to Paris from his year abroad, the film shows him eating a steak dinner with his hippie mother at their kitchen table -- underscoring the fact that the vacation is over. No more twelve different bottles of beer & various international sauces and a million different langage being shouted across the crowded table in the Spanish apartment -- this is back to real, DULL life. It perfectly depicted the let down one feels (or at least I feel) after a fascinating trip abroad.
I disagree with the reviewer who found the lead character despicable, and found his change of heart at the end of the film (abandoning his high-finance job) inexplicable. This is a coming of age film that perfectly explains the decision, and when the protagonist runs away from bureaucracy in the end to pursue his goals of being a writer, I found myself cheering. Had Xavier accepted the suit job analyzing markets, with the only excitement idle gossip with fellow suits over the water cooler, I don't think the viewer would think that Xavier learned anything from his time abroad. The film capitalizes on stereotypess of Europeans (the German is very organized, the Italian carefree, the Brit responsible . . . ) in an entertaining way. The filmmaking is also very interesting and well-done. This movie is one to buy and share; it's not merely a renter.
Rating:
Summary: Youth, Joy and Panache
Review: L'AUBERGE ESPAGNOLE is to films what 'Catcher in the Rye' is to books - a wonder-full romp through the coming of age of multinational youths who are simultaneously dissimilar and similar. The inception of the film is artful with extraordinary camera effects, gradually introducing all the characters we will encounter by means of clever frames within frames and woven words with images. The story is straightforward: Xavier is a bright Parisian boy (Romain Duris, who truly holds this film together), living with his hippie vegetarian mother, and under the influence of the 'adults' who counsel him to learn Spanish, get his MA in Barcelona, then return to Paris as an Economist versed in the Spanish market (remember the 'Graduate' and plastics?).With much anxiety over leaving his Paris, his native language, and his girlfriend (the always lovely Audrey Tautou), he flies to Barcelona. There he is befriended by a Neurologist (whose new wife is to become his paramour), and finally finds an apartment shared by 5 of the most refreshing youths ever gathered under one roof - German, Italian, British, Danish, Spanish, and now French. It is the intermingling of these lives that is the joy of the story and we are witness to their foibles, idiosyncrasies, national traits, bonding, affairs, and finally their influence on the refreshed Xavier's world view. After a year of social and intellectual and emotional learning, Xavier flies back to Paris to accept his "new life" as a boring economics executive, only to wake up and return to the city of joy - Barcelona, Spain. Each of this large cast is excellent, drawing portraits of people we know so well by the end of the that WE could (or could wish to) have as roommates. The photography captures the beauty of Barcelona with lingering glimpses of Gaudi architecture, the ocean, and the vistas. But it is in the end the wonder capturing of our youth (or dreams of same) that makes this movie so special. Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: What a mess...
Review: It is incomprehensible how this movie gets so many good reviews. It fails on every level. It intended perhaps to be a "Big Chill" type movie for the modern Euro generation---but it has none of the depth or warmth, or only the idea. The movie depends most of all on creating characters in a warm communal setting, where we can watch their interactions. That's the first flaw, since most characters are cardboard cut outs we never get to know, but are required to care about. So, it fails on that level, its most important. Warning: Modest spoiler coming. The plotting is inexplicable and filled with holes. Our hero, at the end, for some reason abandons his life's dreams. Supposedly, he has had some major revelations based on his shallow experiences in Barcelona. Nothing that occurred would give you any reason why--or show why he was so deeply affected by his crude misconduct in Barcelona. Another major flaw--our hero is basically despicable. Yet, this movie not only does not care, but makes great fun of it. If this is the epitome of the new, forward thinking Euro generation, please, oh please, let's go back in time. Our hero, for instance, is befriended by a French couple in the airport. They help him. They open their home to him. He returns the favor by taking seduction lessons from a lesbian, and seducing the wife of his benefactor. This remarkable misconduct merits NO particular self-examination or regret. NO apologies. In fact, it's such a minor incident to the filmmaker that the French couple comes to our hero's going away party without recrimination. Ludicrous. Oh, at the same time, our hero is cheating on his girlfriend back home, and flirting with others, too. This ALSO merits no particular thought. So, the great revelations our hero supposedly had in Barcelona that cause abandonment of his life's dream couldn't be too great---since he is overly shallow and wastes no time thinking twice about anything. This mish-mash of a movie succeeds on no level, in short. The characters are not real, the scenarios are ludicrous. The supposed charm does not exist. It's often tedious and boring. You wonder why you should care at all. Oh, and Tautou is wasted in a minor role.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Cultural Diversity
Review: "L'Auberge Espanole"("The Spanish Apartment") is a highly entertaining french film released in 2003. It was deservingly nominated for six Cesar awards(the french equivalent for the Oscar) and won one. It explores a college man's, Xavier, unhappiness and the great lengths he'd go to find himself and discover where he belongs. As an added bonus, it blends many different European cultures(french, spanish, german, italian, and english) as seen especially in the apartment. Such details give audiences the added viewing interest. Its combination of comedy and drama offer many twists and turns in various scenes. During the heavier comedic scenes, the writers add emotional impact in the perfect places. The plot's creative aspects give added viewing pleasure. The actors wonderfully add their own theme impact in their roles. Audrey Tautou's role as Xavier's long distance girlfriend most capitalizes this. Though her role is small, she has one of the biggest movie impact. Romain Duris, another big movie impact actor, plays Xavier beautifully. He proves that he may become a big-name actor in the near future. All other actors also perform their roles wonderfully. "L'Auberge Espanole" is a great movie for those looking for a unique comedy. This is sure to be an unforgettable experience for many.
Rating:
Summary: 9 1/2 stars. Pure delight
Review: Xavier, the young man whose story this is, often has a look of pure delight on his face as he observes and participates in the lives and loves of his house-mates, a mixed international and every-shifting bag of young students who somehow manage to live together in a messy communal apartment in Barcelona. His look is of unadulterated love and appreciation of their diversity, their quirks, their secrets - and that's exactly, I believe, the look my husband and I had on our faces as we watched this movie last night. Yeah, it was New Year's Eve, but we never go to parties; we stay home and watch movies and do our own thing. L'Augerge Espagnole was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. The BEST way to bring in the new year.
I guess you'd call this a coming-of-age piece. It captures vignettes in the interrelated lives of these young people and a couple of others on the fringe, notably a neurosurgeon and his new shy wife, whom Xavier met on the plane. One of the best scenes is when his lesbian housemate instructs him about the seduction of women - graphically - so he can go about making his move on the shy wife. It works, and it's wonderfully done. Another great scene is when ALL the students mobilize to prevent Wendy's boyfriend (she's the Brit) from discovering that she's having herself a fling with an American; her doofus kid brother is the one who comes thru by shoving Wendy under the bed and, bare-chested, taking her place in bed beside the very confused American - well, you have to see it to appreciate it fully. Audrey Tautou is here, too (remember? The girl from Amelie?), as his unhappy girlfriend left behind in Paris. He describes her perfectly: She's a mess. Then he uses the same words to describe himself - and of course, both are correct. But who cares? It's a movie of life, love, youth, freedom, joy, diversity, acceptance, forgiveness.
Don't miss it.
Rating:
Summary: For the Barcelona lovers out there
Review: Do you remember that first day in school, when you were a wide-eyed kid and wondered if you'd make any friends and got butterflies in yr stomach wondering who'd eat lunch with you? And then a few weeks later, you found your group and wondered why you worried in the first place? Well, this movie is a tribute to those days. It's about a French student who travels abroad to Barcelona and moves into a melting pot apartment of other exchange students. Like (the superior) "Lost in Translation" the film gracefully captures the feeling of being lost in a foreign land, only to find your home when surrounded by other similarly lost individuals. It's an idea you'll understand if you've ever stayed in a hostel or struck up a conversation in a random coffee shop on vacation. The cosmopolitan cast and the happily featherweight plot earn this 4 stars. The 5th is for the undeniable true star of the film: Barcelona. The camera loves the city, and I loved how the film used the city without turning into a Cinemascope travelogue. I liked this film before visiting Spain, then loved it after coming back. For anyone who knows the joy of a good sangria in La Ribera after a night of tapas-hopping, this movie is for you.
Rating:
Summary: For everyone who has ever studied abroad!
Review: I saw this film last year while studying in Paris and it is incredible! I saw about 80 foreign films last year and this one is by far the best. If you have ever studied abroad before, this is a movie you HAVE to see. It completely captures the experience, and is absolutley HILARIOUS.
I have been waiting for this to come out on DVD since May!
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