Euro Pudding

[Debaser]

So I saw this film last night beacuase, in lieu of a girlfriend, wife, gay lover, favorite prostitute, or anything of the sort; I have friends whose standards are too damn high to watch Pirates of the Carribean.

Anyway, the selling point for me was the presence of Audrey Tatou, from Amelie. Sadly, while there's plenty of Audrey Tatou, there is none of the Audrey Tatou magic. In Amelie, Miss Tatou, despite not being an especially incredible physical specimen, manages to speak, smile, and carry herself in such a way that forces any man with anything resembling a human heart to develop at least a little bit of a crush on her. Here, in a more or less generic "girlfriend" role, she's pretty much forgettable. So, the film has to rely on the non-Audrey Tatou portions to interest us.

Anyway, the basic premise is that, with the approaching European Union, a French economics student named Xavier decides it's in his best interest to study in Spain, in order to "broaden his horizons". After not having a place to stay for a while, he winds up moving in with an apartment full of students from all over Europe. There's a German guy, a Danish guy, an Italian guy, an English girl and a Spanish girl. They're later joined by a lesbian form some country I can't recall. And the English chick's obnoxious brother, who will teach us all a lesson in tolerance.

Let's see, the above, plus Audrey playing Xavier's long-distance girlfriend, plus this Spanish guy and gal who run a bar Xavier hangs out with, plus a married couple who let Xavier stay with them in the early portions of the film, plus Xavier's mom, plus an American singer who winds up boning the Enlgish chick, plus the English chick's long-distance boyfriend plus a couple other economics students, and... um... Xavier's potential future boss... and, gee, I think that's it, but the movie desperately wants us to take some sort of interest in all of them. And, for the most part, it gives us at least some sort of broad characterization, but it's just too much. Xavier, the married couple, the English girl, her brother, and the lesbian come out the best, and everyone else you just kind of forget about pretty quickly.

Which is a pretty good microcosm of the film's biggest problem: it's just too damn big for itself. There's all sorts of scenes that occur, we forget about them, and then they kind of sort of pay off later, after we've stopped caring. The director really wants to use every camera trick in the book, and manages to use everything once. For the most part, it's appropriate at the time, but consequently the movie never develops any sort of comfortable style. For example, we get extensive use of fast-motion extensively in the early minutes of the film (to the point of annoyance), and never again. There's a big character moment at the end that we know iss coming because it's foreshadowed in the beginning (and fits the "coming of age" formula well), but it doesn't feel at all appropriate when it happens, because the script simply doesn't have the time to really make the impetus for the decision a part of the character.

Anyway, you're probably getting the impression that I hated this movie, which is far from the truth. It centers on Xavier, who on the one hand is a somewhat dull "every man", but on the other comes across sympathetic enough so that at any given moment we care about the things he cares about. You get a good sense of the house, of what daily life for this character and his friends (instead of a big plot arc, the script instead plays a lot like Ready, Okay in that it uses a series of smaller incidents), is pretty funny at times (though, at other times, it can go for long stretches without supplying so much as a giggle, despite being basically a comedy). The characters, dialogue, and situations all feel nice and natural, without any false moments.

Anyway, Raf liked it a lot more than I did, but I wouldn't really recommend going out of your way to see this one.