Ray Pride

The friends of "Friends" would probably hate the friends in "L'auberge espagnole."

Cedric Klapisch's earlier features include the delightful "When the Cat's Away," one of the great comedies about how lives overlap and intersect in the modern city, and "Family Resemblances," a sturdy comedy of family life within the confines of a restaurant. With "L'auberge espagnole" (The Spanish Inn), the 41-year-old French filmmaker works with material of such sitcom-y promise that the characters even remark on it at one point.

Still, it's unlikely that all but the best directors can avoid the standard conflicts that emerge when eight dissimilar people are stuck under one roof. For instance, while Klapisch is no Robert Altman, Altman has never demonstrated a particular interest in coming-of-age stories (let us not speak of the almost unspeakable "O.C. and Stiggs").

Xavier (Romain Duris, a Klapisch regular) is a 25-year-old economics student who leaves his life (and girlfriend, a sullen Audrey Tautou) in Paris behind to study for a year in Barcelona as part of Erasmus, an intra-European exchange program. His father's pulling strings, encouraging him to study economics and learn Spanish, which would make him an ideal Eurocrat in the bowels of the new economics of the European Union.

Xavier, to note again, is 25. After a few false starts, he finds himself with seven roommates in one bustling household, within his own virtual E.U., where every language is spoken and few emotions are held in reserve. One of the delicious felicities of "L'auberge espagnole," once entitled "Euro Pudding," is its effortless cosmopolitanism. "Europudding" would have been too much of an in-joke; it's a derisive bit of jargon for a film with financiers of many nations and thus no identity. Klapisch himself has a walk-on in one street scene, with the self-deprecating "What a fucking mess!" being his most memorable line.

Even when characters are underdeveloped and Dominique Colin's sometimes-muddy shot-on-video images diminish the brilliant blues of the sea and sky and mosaics of the Catalan capital, languages and cultures jostle fruitfully. Even noting its limitations while watching it over the weekend with a notably white-haired audience, I was pleased. There are only a handful of films I know that mess with language and the overlap of nationalities so playfully, most notably Wim Wenders' 1977 thriller "The American Friend," which took as its subtext the Americanization of European culture and movies.

Duris, who has also played a winsome Gallic charmer in movies like Tony Gatlif's "Gadjo Dilo," is Klapisch's everyboy. Hair cut short, unlike his goateed and maned hipster in "When the Cat's Away," Duris is cute but, when his character is frustrated, manages to looks like an utter doofus, which is, of course, part of his charm. While his roommates-an English woman, a Belgian lesbian, Italian, German, and Danish men and a single Catalan woman-are indicated with swift comic strokes, the women in Xavier's life are less well-drawn. Audrey Tautou continues to play surly, sullen variations on her charming turn as "Amelie," and as Anne-Sophie, a young, neglected wife whom Xavier beds, the estimable Judith Godreche has little to do but look stricken or gratefully orgasmic. (There is one sustained comic and erotic frisson, when the husband returns home and Xavier wants to flee; all Anne-Sophie wants is to continue to run her hands along Xavier's hands, his arms, his body. It's a very funny scene.)

Twenty-five is probably the oldest characters are allowed to be in movies and still ask themselves such questions about identity and the meaning of life unless they're in period costumes, nibbling on rinds of cheese in a chalky garret. Some grownups might not give a good merde about Xavier's inner struggles about kisses, longing, how we read city streets and, in general, his emerging world view. But important questions get tossed into the air, even if some are underlined with all the dramatic subtlety of a soccer ball being booted straight up in the air. Klapisch wrote the script quickly when a since-finished heist movie fell through. The video production allowed for a lower budget, but it also allows for a spontaneity and briskness that keeps the clichés, both old and new, from wearying.

After spending a couple of weeks surveying Francois Truffaut's Antoine Doinel films (notably "The 400 Blows," "Antoine and Colette" and "Bed and Board"), it's shocking to realize how difficult it is to make lasting romances. Equally shocking is how simple the means can be to pull it off. There are a busy range of devices in "L'auberge," many of which are drawn from its video origins, and it weakens the movie's achievements. When you call a movie like "L'auberge espagnole" a tasty soufflé, you are also saying that it is quickly digested as the next meal approaches. Or the next episode of "Friends," the one about the French guy who doesn't realize just how lucky, lucky, lucky he is.

"L'auberge espagnole" is playing at Pipers Alley.

(2003-05-28)

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