sugar-abstinence What a disappointment this flick turned out to be. It doesn't even merit the word 'film'.The camera-work is so-so, there are needlessly sped-up scenes of the main jerk walking around various offices and streets, and it generally left no real impression. With such a wonderful setting as Barcelona, much more could have been done with this.My main grievance is with the characters and the plot, all of which are terrifyingly hollow. The main chap, Xavier, is nothing short of an asshole. He cares about women only so far as he can use them sexually, thinks nothing of rape-seducing a married woman, and then sulks when his girlfriend dumps him for another. There's nothing to like about him. He isn't deep, he isn't exciting, and he isn't charming.The other people in the apartment suffer similar problems. They are cookie-cutter characters. The German is the studious, organised, anally retentive flatmate. The English girl appears to be a neat-freak, frustrated, and ultimately sexually somewhat immoral. (The one 'bonding' experience these flatmates have is in fact to hide her cheating from her English partner). The Spanish girl is just there for a few sentences, and the Danish guy also seems not to serve a purpose.Now to the plot, if such it is. Xavier is frightened of growing up and committing to anything. So he leaves France, and aims for Barcelona. There he parties up large, ostensibly studying, while trying to sleep with as many women as possible. He and girlfriend break up. He returns to France, can't handle the idea of an office job, and decides to turn his mediocre adventures into a book. All of this takes up nearly two hours, which is far too long for all this white noise.There is no message in this film unless one of cynical nihilism. It is a product of its time and generation, one that uses copious lazy stereotyping while trying to somehow claim it is being inclusive of European identities. It fails on all levels.

Armand friendship, ages, community, small human map of E.U., French style to present a world far of limits , delicate feelings, reflection in the others, love, adventures, common existence, trips, joy, search of sense, invention of experiences and sentimental connections. a film about evolution and self definition. nothing complicated. but profound analyse of escapes, dreams and importance of gesture as skin of words. a picture of young people as picture of a very strange and, in same measure, common, Europe. a message of hope. with crumbs of courage, sentimental complications, personal problems, need of friends and importance of meeting. the first virtue - its fresh seductive air. the second virtue - its art to be perfect mirror of a generation. the last virtue - unspoken words, mixture of realism and poetry and the waters of emotions. a love story. for a continent as part of its citizens.

Rubens Junior Cédric Klapisch's own story naturally gives him the sensibility he shows in his movies. L'Albergue Espagnole is a light and interesting movie about the self discovering, the difficulties of youth and the hard steps to maturation, also the way we discover the others, showing in a simple and practical way that understanding surpasses any language and that protocols are unnecessary though some rules exists but it works exactly for the fact that it's never established and it's followed by their own each way.Xavier is a 25 y.o. french living some kind of existential crisis: he always wanted to be a writer but at the same time he pretends to study economy to please his father. And that's what he's going to do. He goes to Spain to practice and learn the language and come back ready to the market. Few days after his arrival, Xavier goes to live in a apartment with a bunch of 20-something, each one of them coming from a different country, with completely different languages and cultures, living in a pretty much organized disorganization. And with them Xavier discovers himself, teaching and learning and seeing in each one of them a piece of his own self forgot or undiscovered.Maybe Cédric Klapich's movie could be seen as autobiographical, maybe it's just another fiction with great observation of reality, but it also can be seen as a metaphor with each one of the characters representing their nations and respectively cultures, qualities and defects showing that differences don't need to lead us to fighting. Any which way the movie is interesting in all aspects.The story continues 5 years later in Les Pupées Russes (2005) and is worth watching.

H. "When you first arrive in a new city, nothing makes sense. Everything's unknown, virgin... After you've lived here, walked these streets, you'll know them inside out. You'll know these people. Once you've lived here, crossed this street 10, 20, 1000 times... it'll belong to you because you've lived there. That was about to happen to me, but I didn't know it yet."The quote is when I decided that I'm going to love this movie, 10/10 kind of love. The premise looked really interesting and promising, I already liked the way the movie was made (camera work etc.), and quotes like that are gems that I love to find and that I don't find often. It felt very refreshing and quite original too - maybe someone has, but I haven't seen many movies with similar premise and everything, if any.I wish the whole movie could be like its first 15 or even 30 minutes (I don't look at the clock when a movie is that good, so I don't know when exactly it went all wrong). In fact I'd love to see a movie that would follow this movie's premise and first scenes.Sadly, it soon becomes a movie about mostly everyone sleeping with everyone (which, most of the time, is also everyone cheating on everyone), getting drunk/high and having no real goal in life. It gets so shallow that it becomes almost unwatchable and the main character, so promising at first, becomes the most despicable of them all. I wish I could give it a 10/10 for the beginning and 0/10 for the rest, but 2/10 has to do - there's no 0/10, so 1/10 is for everything else, and the good part gets one point.