L'Auberge Espagnole

[DemoCoder]

(semi spoilers, but the movie doesn't exactly have a plot to spoil)

a.k.a Pot Luck, Spanish Hotel, Euro-pudding, and other names.

I went to see this at an art house tonight because nothing better is out currently in the theaters. It's a story of a bunch of foreign exchange students sharing an apartment in Barcelona, part coming of age story, part romanic comedy, and part pro-European Union/multicultural allegory.

I thought the movie was ok, but was annoyed by one part of it. The movie inserted a British character (William) who is the brother of one of the girls (Wendy) staying in the apartment. The character of William is played as a classic insensitive jerk, a sort of red-neck Brit who doesn't understand the new cool multicultural crowd. William makes an ass out of himself by cracking bad cultural jokes about French, Germans, and Spanish. For example, in one scene, he mimics a German accent and pretends to be a Nazi. He makes stereotype comments about Germans (good at being neat and punctual, etc etc)

William is used to demonstrate that stereotypes are wrong, and all of the other roommates are of course hip cool people who understand this, that you can't generalize about people's cultures.

Guess what happens next? An American guitar player shows up, and the movie that up until this point made racists look like uncouth idiots, let's the main characters sit there and rattle off stereotypical comments about Americans without anyone batting an eye.

William ends up "cool" in the end, redeeming himself by pretending to be gay to save his sister (who is about to be discovered by her boyfriend Alistair that she was sleeping with the American), and William and the American end up in bed. (little bit like Britain and the US in foreign affairs eh?)

I guess it's bad for germans, french, spanish, and british to stereotype each other, but it's totally ok to do it to "stupid" Americans (comment from the movie)

 

[horvendile]

I haven't seen it or heard about it, but it does sound a bit, uh, sub optimal.

 

[Mariner]

Sounds like one to miss, IMO. Some continental films are pretty good (and are often remade in Hollywood!) but some are tripe. This one sounds more 'tripish' than good to me - I can't stand films which try to be too clever for their own good.

 

[L233]

Hm, ich haven't seen to movie, in fact I have never heard of it... but Democoder, have you considered that the stereotyping of the American guy might be part of the message? That the same people who are against stereotyping Europeans of various natonalities have no problem stereotyping Yanks? I guess since it's a European movie its target audience are Europeans so this movie might actually try to point out hypocrisy.

 

[DemoCoder]

Not really, the stereotype comes as the main character gets angry because he just got dumped by his girlfriend (who was seeing another guy) and now another girl who is his roommate is cheating on her boyfriend too by sleeping with an American.

The problem is, the dialogue goes like this (not exact quotes)

"I can't believe you're seeing that American, he's everybit as rude and stupid as they are."

Wendy: "Well, of course he's stupid, but I like him"


No, when Wendy's brother Bill does something similar

To a german guy: "I noticed your room is very neat and you are always studying in here. That's a german thing isn't it. Adolf Hitler was also very neat. (mimicing german accent) I must complete my studies. Heil Hitler..."

German guy goes and talks to Wendy about it, then Wendy comes in a there is a long scene where she berates Bill. Bill also gets berated by a Spanish girl and Italian guy when he first arrives.

The only real way to look at the movie not being hypocritical is by saying that the main character said it because he was pissed off at women cheating on men and took his revenge on the American character, and the reason the British girl didn't defend the American is because this particular American really was a muscle-bound non-intellectual bad-boy type.

The movie is supposed to represent a style of thinking that needs to exist for the European Union to work, e.g. mutual respect for other cultures, which is why this stood out for me.

I've seen plenty of movies with Americans as stupid or evil bad guys, so it's not that, it's the fact that the anti-american comment didn't jive with the hip-cool-peace-and-love-we're-all-deserving-of-respect-theme.

 

[Jon Brittan]

I think you may be hitting the point with the final comment there DemoCoder. In terms of promoting a fully functional European Union then there has to be cultural tollerance amongst all members of that European Union, but there is also a need to portray America as arrogant and stupid as they are the other real option available to EU members as a partner country.

In many ways I'd rather see a full economic union (if such a thing was truly necessary and destined to happen) between Britain and the US than with Europe, and it's this viewpoint that needs to be broken down if the rest of the EU want a fully functional Union with every member of Europe.




Anyway, sounds like the film was getting its messages mixed up. It's wrong to stereotype cultures, but it's okay to cheat on your boyfriend?

 

[fbg1]

It's always nice to see Europeans criticizing Americans. That way we Americans can be sure we're doing something right. If the criticism ever stops, god help us.