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Created Dec 14, 2012 10:20PM PST • Edited Jan 06, 2019 02:30AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   How to make a pleasant French sex comedy? Drop half a dozen attractive young singles into one apartment, ideally in a mildly exotic city. Occasionally drop in a boyfriend or girlfriend from back home and mix in a lonely wife living nearby.

   Voilà! L’Auberge Espagnole, a European hit that went on to spawn a sequel.

   The movie centers on aspiring Eurocrat Romain Duris’s year abroad studying in Barcelona. Leaving his sad-sack girlfriend behind in Paris, he finds himself living in a shared coed apartment. Lots of mildly comedic drama ensues, some of it nicely sexy – all very post-modern.

   Basically it’s a coming-of-age comedy for today’s late-to-mature generation, Eurostyle. Young and callow, they have the privileges of adulthood without the responsibilities. Good deal. Never mind that they’re already in their twenties. That’s part of the whole Eurostyle thing.

   The movie has fun with the apartment as Euro melting pot, complete with a Spaniard, Frenchman, Belgian, Brit, German, Italian, and maybe one or two more. Euro yes, but the movie is typically French in its survey of the many shades of love – new love, casual love, betrayed love, illicit love and love lost.

   The Spanish Apartment is sufficiently fun to inspire a viewing of its sequel – Russian Dolls. Nice title.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Romain Duris is pleasantly inoffensive as a student with girlfriend troubles. Audrey Tautou is suitably moody as his troubled girlfriend.

   Among his large group of roommates, Kelly Reilly and Cécile De France make the strongest impressions. Here as elsewhere, Reilly comes on softly and then proves increasingly distinctive as the movie rolls along. De France’s strong and sexy lesbian gives the movie delicious tension.

   Judith Godrèche is adorable as an unsophisticated young wife who ends up in a torrid affair. Very French.

   Kevin Bishop deserves a shout out as the brother of Reilly’s character, a perfect send-up of a boorish Brit.

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

6. Female Stars Very Good 3.5

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    Lightweight Fellini at times, buoyantly shallow most of the time, but natural all the same, e.g. him not kissing her when they reunite at the airport. Instead he looks into her eyes for the first 20 feet.

    The central couple are well drawn, recognizable types from Paris to Palo Alto. They should love each other but can’t muster the passion, yet each considers themselves passionate. Funny how that happens.

    The story, well constructed. He says “Don’t worry, it’ll be okay.” Why do I sense it won’t.

    Funny too, as in “You say la ’fuck to say University?” “Yes, you say la ’fac.”

    Now that’s facking funny in any language.

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

12. Play Very Good 3.5

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Great 4.0

    Great sightseeing settings around Barcelona. If you loved Vicky Cristina Barcelona for its celebration of all things Barcelona, this is right up there with it.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.0

17. Sex Erotic 2.6

18. Violence Gentle 1.2

19. Rudeness Salty 2.1

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    The movie’s aspiring bureaucrat studies economics with no sense of how it works in the real world, a perfect picture of a future economic strangler. It brings a Rolling Stones song to mind.

    They called him the economic strangler, the one that stole the get-up-and-go. They called him the growth teabagger, the one that said FREEDOM hell no. And if you ever meet the jobs fandangler, he’ll take your wealth and go. Baby, and it hurts!

    Man, Let It Bleed was a great album. Oh, that wasn’t how the Stones sang it? Oops, back to the movie.

    One of the young students comes face-to-face with an ex-lover who is now the Mother of his child. He quickly gets over his shock to go on with his freewheeling life, apparently confident that he has no responsibility towards them. Very European, and hardly un-American now too I guess.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.5

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0