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Pot Luck [2002]


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Just say 'non'
Review date: 2008-10-21 Rating: 2 out of 10

Oh my God, I loathed this film. It's the celluloid equivalent of a French exchange student in stone-washed jeans and slip-on shoes, carrying a really big, brightly coloured rucksack, and there wasn't a single character that I didn't want to punch in the head.

On some spurious pretext, a young French student (who has all the charm - and the hairstyle - of a Young Conservative party member) jets off to Barcelona for a year long ERASMUS scheme, where he flatshares with a mixed bag of Europeans - enough nationalities, almost, to hold their own Eurovision Song Contest (although, thank God, they don't). Director Klapisch ('Chacun cherche son chat') can do the whole 'quirky' thing pretty well when he wants to, and the first ten or fifteen minutes of `Pot Luck' seem to be leading in that direction (albeit with shedloads of split-screen visual nonsense like the BBC graphics department on election day). Then we get to Spain, and - hola, it's not that kind of film after all, it's actually a film in which practically everyone has to speak a language that isn't their own (like Nico's dire performance in 'La dolce vita' going on forever and ever and ever). And the cast is so enormous they all blend into one great big amorphous blob - except, that is, for the Essex boy bigotry of Kevin Bishop as William, the brother of extraordinarily well-spoken English girl Wendy (and the difference between Spanish and Catalan is highlighted, but no one bats at eyelash at the fact that accent-wise these British siblings are about as likely as Bernard Manning and Elizabeth Hurley).

I can't really tell you the plot, as such, because there isn't one - or, rather, there are seemingly dozens of them, trickling off in all directions. The subplot is to `Pot Luck' what the actual plot is to most films. I can almost see the red mist and the hair-tearing in the editing room as Klapisch tries to wrestle the loose threads into submission. So he starts off telling us this is a film `about taking off', then changes his mind... and then changes it back again, at the end, when he obviously realizes that, 'zut alors' (or something less offensively stereotypical), he hasn't got a bally clue what it's about. The answer is: nothing. His `hero' cheats on his girlfriend (with perhaps the single most vacuous female imaginable), treats his long-suffering mum with inexplicable contempt, and oddest of all seems shocked to the core by the mention of lesbianism. As for me, I'm shocked to the core by the fact that Klapisch went on to make a sequel to this dire mess. Watch at your peril.

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Reviews


L'Auberge espagnole - the soup of life
Review date: 2008-08-02 Rating: 10 out of 10

I bought this DVD on whim but I was both very pleasantly and overwhelmingly surprised. Fast paced, funny and not boring for even a second this film is well acted by its young cast and thus the story is made very believable.

Narrated in the first person by Xavier, an Economics graduate student preparing for a life of bureaucracy, by going studying for a year in Barcelona to learn Spanish.He becomes part of the Erasmus programme with unexpected encounters and consequences - in a flatshare of students who joined from all over Western Europe.

The film, through Xavier, portrays well the absurd situations we find ourselves in life and the surreal, the kind and the silly. Kevin Bishop here portrays the English insensitive lout abroad very well.

"L'Auberge espagnole", the original title of the film, means in French you get out what you put in or it's a mad/chaotic place - in this film it represents a kind of a soup of life where you are brewing what will be. The movie is directed and written by Cédric Klapisch. The sequel is called Russian Dolls - Pot Luck 2 [2005], an equally engaging film.

I can highly recommend this, especially if ever as a student you have lived in shared accommodation with other students. Gawd!!! - this did bring back some memories, but fun ones.

Not to be missed.

Learning Spanish in Barcelona? How about Catalan?
Review date: 2008-01-25 Rating: 2 out of 10

I have watched the film and as a British citizen of Catalan origins I could not believe what I saw!
The film shamelessly portrays a film where almost everything is Spanish.

Yes, Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, a nation repressed by Spain for almost 3 centuries now but Catalan is still the official and proper language of Catalonia and it feels like an insult or the result of a badly researched film that someone goes to Barcelona to learn Spanish.

It would have been more realistic if the film were set in Madrid or Seville or Salamanca? Why in Barcelona? Because Barcelona is fashionable, trendy and cosmopolitan but has a fundamental flaw, the locals don't consider themselves Spanish and insist in speaking their own language and use it in their school system, universities, street signs, media and all spheres of public life, but ALAS! this nowhere to be seen in this highly mediocre film!

A total disappontment, the result of ignorance or the suppression of linguistic realities in Europe!

This one stays with you
Review date: 2007-12-17 Rating: 10 out of 10

I can't say enough about how good this film was but what got me thinking afterwards, apart from what others have said, was how different this would have been as an American production. I know it's easy to dump on Hollywood but I could see this becoming "Friends in Barcelona" in the wrong hands, ie. everyone has a screamingly funny comment or is really "out there". Instead, you get really natural characters maybe a bit on the unusual side but very believable and finally, totally engaging. I felt something for all of them and actually miss them in a strange way! So... not surprisingly, can't wait to see Pot Luck 2 (Russian Dolls).

Neither here nor there
Review date: 2007-05-14 Rating: 6 out of 10

I went to see a special screening of this film yesterday after having this on my wish list for a good few months. I left slightly disappointed in that it did not live up to my high expectations, but I cannot work out if I liked or disliked it.
Although visually the film is satisfying, I did gain the impression that the plot seems to lack structure, I left without really knowing what had happened or what it was about. Events one would expect to be dramatic or focused upon, such as the way Xavier's girlfriend breaks up with him, are under-played and given no real focus. The film lacks emotion, we witness actions but I'm sorry to say there was not much substance to these. Maybe I have missed the point.. However, the one point which was sucessfully highlighted (via the English girl's brother) is that human nature is universal, and natives do not tend to live up to the foreigner's perception and stereotype of their country's people.
The film did provide a few chuckles, but I wanted more out of it. I would not reccommend people to not watch it, but just do not expect too much from it.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Judith Godreche
Romain Duris
Kelly Reilly
Audrey Tautou
Cecile De France

Creators:
Romain Duris (Primary Contributor)
Judith Godreche (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: Cinefile
Manufacturer: Cinefile
EAN: 5060093150001
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL, Widescreen,
Release date: 2004-10-25
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 135 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2002
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: French (Original Language)

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