Pot Luck Details

[Highly rated reviewer]

EU DIRECTIVE: 1 2C BT NT GR8

The EEC/the EC/the EU has been around for a long time now but this is the only film about it I know of (yet I don't have an exhaustive film knowledge). A French exchange student arrives in a Barcelona flat, which becomes increasingly crowded as people from different European countries join the party. Their idiosyncracies makes this a 'comedy of manners'. The Brits get the most, though justified, ribbing: both our contempt for our fellow Europeans (a hard-working German student is bated by an English lad with a Basil Fawlty-style Hitler imitation) and our loving, ‘special relationship’ with the USA (the lad’s sister ends up in bed with in an ‘oafish’ American). This film was very popular in France when it came out and made director Cedric Klapisch’s name (so it says in the Wikepedia entry on it, which also states that the film’s international title was ‘Euro Pudding’). Yet for me the film’s sometimes quirky style falls just short of effective, its humour falls just short of funny, and its plot falls just short of interesting. It seemed to be the result of an EU committee discussion on how to give our beloved Super State a human face. Or, at least, to satisfy the requirements and stipulations of an EU film-sponsorship grant form. In short, a bit of a Euro Pudding.

Customer Review

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!