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Reviews
L'auberge espagnole (2002)
L'Auberge Espagnole seems to be a nice casserole of how the EU could converge and clash against each other, but ultimately, it's about young people searching for identity.
Chaos and Mayhem Under One Roof
One thing I can say about The Spanish Apartment is that it's so very EU and so very po-mo. Cedric Klapisch puts together a collage of fractured identities and a menagerie of cultures under one roof in this transcontinental coproduction.
Xavier is a college dude in France, where he studies the economy and his dad wants him to work for the ministry--the boys' club, le bureau du papa. His girlfriend, Amelie Tautou with the Amelie bangs, is all demanding and whiny. This causes him to scrounge around for a scholarship and ends up in Barcelona as an exchange student of Erasmus. He can barely understand the language. And at the airport, sad about leaving Paris and his girlfriend, he runs into newlyweds. The guy's a neurologist, and the shy wife, Anne Sophie, fell in love with him at first sight. You know the doctor dude has huge asshole potential, but this moment, he's still nice, and he offers our guy a couch to crash on while he's looking for a place of his own.
Xavier, as played by Romain Duris, looks like Paolo Fabregas with more hair. He ends up in an apartment that might as well advertise itself as the European Union. Seven people - Wendy the Brit, a German who gets p*ssed off by Wendy's annoying brother William, Alessandro, a lesbian chick, and a lone Spanish girl. Of course there's going to be chaos. Everytime they answer the phone, they have to consult this list on the wall, with names and corresponding national flags and the proper way to say "No, he's not here right now." The difficulty with having seven languages under one roof is a mine for comedy. Where "la fac" is slang for the university, one girl amuses herself by mispronouncing her vowels and saying "la f*ck" over and over again. Yes, school definitely can screw you.
The film is also big on identity, both cultural and personal. When the professor insists on speaking Catalan because they're in Catalona, some girl speaks up and wants the class to be conducted in Spanish. But the prof won't shake off, and the girl and Xavier become friends as they discuss the intricacies of language and identity.
While the plurality of cultures and beliefs may naturally clash, as seen when Wendy's brother William starts annoying the hell out of everyone, it can also come together for a single cause. Wendy has started dating an American dude, and Xavier doesn't quite understand why she would choose an ugly American. But Wendy can't help it, she was lured by the strumming of guitars when they all sang "No Woman, No Cry." So now she's sleeping with this brash foreigner, and along comes a phone call from her legitimate beau. Alistair has just landed in Barcelona, and is planning to surprise her. Housemate Alessandro didn't quite remember who he was, and when he finally figured it out, and realized that Wendy is still playing hooky with the American, he starts a veritable phone brigade which involves a city wide quest for all the characters to race home and bar Alistair from discovering his girlfriend's infidelity.
The screen is split into several bars showing the housemates talking to one another as they relay the news and race home, and in a small insert in the corner of the screen stands a wistful Alistair, flowers in hand, looking out the window of a bus en route to the apartment.
Xavier arrives first, pretending that the lock in the door is broken. He invites Alistair for a drink in the cafe downstairs. The merry gang arrives and the ruse about the broken key is put to bed. They all tumble into the foyer, but not before William the pest jumps through the window and into his sister's room. The naked couple is trapped, the door opens and we find a naked William in bed with the American dude. Wendy is saved for the meantime, and poor William has to endure the awkwardness of his forced "outing." A forced identity is enforced to salvage another. Nevertheless, his theatrics somehow makes up for his annoyingness and killjoy factor at the start.
Xavier is also on a quest to find out what he really wants, who he really is. In a foreign country, all the words, the signs on the streets, they're all strange. But when you pass them 10, 20, 1000 times, you start to own them. You understand. Xavier is one of the luckier ones who can adapt. With the help of a bartender in a cafe, he learns puta madre Spanish in no time at all. On the other hand, Anne-Sophie is silent and shy, and would succumb to Xavier's overtures and get involved in an affair with someone who speaks her language.
Even the doctor is in on this culture/memory conspiracy. He is fascinated with the many capabilities of the human brain. One area holds the facility of language, a different part for memory. In the results of one study, he says, amnesia has an odd effect with bilingual people. They retain the mother tongue, but the second language will completely disappear.
In later scenes, when everything was crashing down for Xavier, he begins to fear that he's losing his language. He has visions--he runs into Erasmus everywhere. He couldn't understand a thing. He runs to Monsieur Neurologist and asks for help. We are treated to mad visuals of all the things which Xavier has experienced. There is the fantasy Anne-Sophie, in red lingerie, ready to seduce him. When Xavier wakes up, Monsieur Neurologist tells him that his brain is okay, but he must never see Anne-Sophie again. He knows.
Once back in Paris, he returns to the routine of his ordinary life. He takes the exam, and will begin work at the ministry of Economy, specializing in the Spanish market. As his father's friend shows him around in the new office, with its color segregated racks and vendo machines, he turns arounds and runs out of the office.
That's not what he had planned to do with his life. He goes through all the ID photos taken, with his variously arranged hair, and admits that all of those guys are him. He is everyone he has ever met. He had wanted to write, and that's what he's going to do. To submit to that blond little boy in the picture, who declares "I want to write books."
The end is the beginning: This is not a story about taking off, but rather about touching down. It's about the multiplicity of things. How our identities are built by all the experiences we ever have, personal or borrowed. The opening credits suggested a plurality, multiple tiles with words and images which make up a whole. That's what L'Auberge Espagnole is about. Fractured words and images which make up a whole.
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The Spanish Apartment (L'Auberge Espagnole) is available on VCD. I keep thinking that the title means "spanish eggplant" when translated, but only because "auberge" is so close to "aubergine," which means eggplant. Oh well, in line with the theme, is all.
Se souvenir des belles choses (2001)
Interesting dissection of love and memory
**SPOILERS**Se Souvenir des Belles Choses is a really interesting dissection of what it means to be in love. And I mean really be in love, not the fleeting, easily discardable fancies we usually think to be the real thing. It means leaping past the difficulties of living with the other person's previous relationships, of putting up with all of your lover's neuroses, psychological disabilities, of how someday, she wouldn't even recognize you if she ran into you on the street.
The film started with this girl Claire Poussin checking herself into an institution. She was 32 years old, and seemed in perfect health. But one summer evening in the middle of a walk in the woods, a storm started and she was struck by lightning. Then she started having difficulties remembering things. She suspects she might have inherited Alzheimer's disease from her mother, who died from it. It couldn't possibly happen to her, her sister insists. But she submits herself to a series of tests, and meets a variety of people who really are troubled. There was a guy who wouldn't take baths and constantly wore his pajamas. To every question he would only reply "Up yours." Two elderly men spent their days bent over an unending game of chess. And there was Philippe, a nicely man with a scar his left eye. His wife and child died from a car accident, but he couldn't remember anything. He spent his time raking leaves and sniffing wine he stored under his bed.
One day, Philippe's parents visit him and his mother bursts into hysterics, blaming him for the deaths for which he couldn't even show remorse. At the canteen, Philippe catches Claire staring at him and he attacks her, screaming that she must blame him, like everyone does. How can you grieve for something you cannot remember? How can you feel an emotion when you don't have the memories to link them to?
There was this moment in the film where Philippe tried apologizing to Claire about his outburst. They were in the canteen, crowded as it were. But the way the director filmed them, with Philippe facing Claire against a background that was filled with light, they seemed to face each other, when in truth they were in separate tables. You could see how their smiles, hesitant at first, started to widen and brighten up their faces. You could see how Claire pushed the hair out of her eyes, and we could not help but see how graceful her hand was, how the slow start of a smile was enough to fill that canteen with light.
Then at the museum, they sit in front of this painting of an angel. Philippe sits beside Claire, and he starts to tell her about the story of the Angel of Oblivion. "When babies are born, they know everything that happened from the fall of man, to the plagues, I want to kiss you, to the great war, the creation of instant soup, I want to kiss you." Claire turns to him, "What was that you said?" He says he couldn't remember, then repeats it again. "Then the Angel touches the baby's lips, so he wouldn't remember. The baby has to learn everything all over again. What's left of the Angel's touch is this cleft right above your lips." Then he hushes her. They kiss.
We know that they were starting to fall in love. It's strange how our remembrance of things create our feelings. We remember love by the way our fingers brushed together, by how the light brings out the most brilliant smiles, and the gracefulness with which you brushed the hair out of your eyes. It's the little things which attach themselves like glue to our memory. And those are the little things that make us smile when we remember them. Se souvenir des belles choses. Try to remember the small beautiful things. It's what makes life worth living, even when things start to get difficult. Even when your ability to retain those memories begin to fade and disappear.
That was the very thing that Claire feared. She cannot remember things anymore. She doesn't have the word for these things. And how can you remember love when you cannot even remember your lover's face? She knew that her memory was going to fade soon, but she wanted her life to be worth living, and the only way was to be in love, and to be enveloped by that love.
It was a crazy thing for a woman who is starting to lose her memory to live with a man whose very painful memories are starting to surface. But they took the risk. Their apartment was filled with post-its and clocks. They wrote their itineraries, a per hour guide of the day's tasks. It's like learning things for the first time.
Philippe cannot remember how it was to be with a woman, even though he had a wife and child. Don't worry, it will come back to you, the doctor said. In time you will remember, the way you can never forget how to ride a bike. He was falling in love with Claire as though he were an adolescent experiencing it for the first time. Philippe's awe was fascinating to watch. If only we can retain that awe every time we fall in love, but then it would require losing our cynicism accumulated through the years. [Unless we all decide to have collective amnesia, but that would be too difficult. I digress.]
It warmed me to see how these two people worked hard at building their life together. Philippe would repeat every so often the route of how to get to the hospital and back home. He would outline it on a map on the wall, and enumerate every corner and bus stop, to make sure that Claire gets home safe.
It breaks me when Claire really started to lose her memory. She was trying to bake a cake for dinner. She needed three eggs: one, two, three, she counted. The second she put the eggs in the bowl, she would read the cookbook and see that she needed three eggs. Start all over again. It was funny at first, how she repeated things. Then we see her staring at the schedule on her blackboard: 6.30pm, light up the oven at 180 degrees. As she does so, she sees that she had not completed the task for 6pm, prepare the cake batter. She turns and sees that the eggs were still there. Over their candlelit dinner, we see Philippe crunching on burned buttercake. But he smiled all throughout, insisting it was delicious. Claire is not convinced, and comes back to the table with a bowl of sugar. She forgot to put in the sugar. "So what," says Philippe. "We had a sugarfree buttercake."
Any man who would willingly eat sugarfree buttercake and patiently prepare audio guides for me must be a treasure. Philippe is like that. He realizes that he was happy with Claire, and it doesn't matter if the bad memories are coming back. He wants to be happy and he's willing to work at it even when it's becoming obvious that Claire's condition is going worse.
Claire disappears after one of her hospital visits. Philippe has convinced her to use the audio guides he made for her, but after making a wrong turn she couldn't find her way back. She roams through the streets and ends up in an out of the way warehouse and into the woods. It starts to rain. Meanwhile, Philippe searches the city all over for her. When he finally finds her the following morning, Claire sits, babbling, dancing around, with a gone look in her eyes. She can't even recognize him. He shows her his scar. "This is your nicely man." He kisses her. "This is how I taste." He hushes her and tells her the story of the angel of oblivion. But she doesn't remember. Not even the beautiful things.