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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

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89
Man on Wire
85
Slumdog Millionaire
84
Momma's Man
84
Christmas Tale, A
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
83
Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
82
Tell No One
82
Rachel Getting Married
82
Frozen River
82
Let the Right One In
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
78
I've Loved You So Long
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
75
Pool, The
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
72
I Served the King of England
71
Frost/Nixon
70
I.O.U.S. A
69
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69
Fear(s) of the Dark
68
August Evening
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Hunger
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Synecdoche, New York
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Eden
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Changeling
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We Are Wizards
57
Special
57
Sixty Six
56
Religulous
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Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
What Just Happened?
54
Battle in Seattle
54
Good Dick
53
RocknRolla
51
Morning Light
50
Breakfast with Scot
47
How About You
47
Choke
46
Dukes, The
43
Tru Loved
43
Gardens of the Night
41
Cthulhu
40
Igor
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
My Name Is Bruce
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
31
Hounddog
30
Guitar, The
28
Fireproof
27
Lake City
26
House of the Sleeping Beauties
26
Filth and Wisdom
xx
Dostana
xx
Black Balloon, The
xx
Let Them Chirp Awhile
xx
Local Color
xx
Nobel Son
xx
Extreme Movie
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
L'Auberge Espagnole
Fox Searchlight Pictures
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for language and sexual content
Starring
Romain Duris,
Cécile De France,
Judith Godrèche,
Audrey Tautou,
Kelly Reilly,
Xavier De Guillebon,
Kevin Bishop,
and
Federico D'Anna
The story of a young man who, through cosmopolitan adventures and comic tribulations, finds his own unexpected place in a mixed-up, multi-cultural modern world. (Fox Searchlight)
| GENRE(S): |
Romance
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Cédric Klapisch
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Cédric Klapisch
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: December 23, 2003
Video: December 23, 2003
Theatrical: May 16, 2003
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
128 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
France / Spain |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
French / Spanish / English / Catalan / Danish (with English subtitles) |
"L'Auberge Espagnole" is a French slang term that means a "free for all"; Audience Award for Best Picture, 2002 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival; Best Screenplay and Best Female Newcomer (De France), 2003 Lumiere Awards; Best Female Newcomer (De France), 2003 Cesar Awards

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
90
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
In almost every way that I can think of, L'Auberge Espagnole is a perfect movie... It is a film that feels alive.

90
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Blissfully funny, terrifically intelligent and tender when you least expect it to be.
90
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
It's an exhilarating, funny, very sweet movie.

88
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
LAuberge Espagnole (The Spanish Hotel) is unexpectedly entertaining because it captures the point in young adulthood when life is unseriously serious, or maybe seriously unserious.

88
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
A love song to the new Europe (Klapisch's original title: Euro Pudding) and a snapshot of a polyglot gang on the cusp of kind-of-reckless youth and responsibility-burdened adulthood.

83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
This community finds its balance with an easy effortlessness.

80
The New Yorker
David Denby
Vignettish and offhand, but its extremely pleasant, and it suggests what can be done with lightweight equipment and a loose-limbed approach to the right subject. [19 May 2003, p. 94]
80
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Thomas
Exhilarating comedy...Its warm, embracing spirit is refreshing in these divisive times.

80
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
Not since Lukas Moodysson's "Together" has communal living been depicted with such warmth and feeling for the entire ensemble.

80
Dallas Observer
Gregory Weinkauf
Writer-director-actor Cedric Klapisch simultaneously shows great moviemaking flair and reveals a very peculiar worldview.

75
USA Today
Claudia Puig
It energetically captures the frenzied pace of contemporary existence, the complexities of life in a multicultural world, the rootless joys of living in a foreign city and the heady world of possibilities one envisions while in college.

75
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
The movie is as light and frothy as a French comedy, which is what it is, a reminder that Cedric Klapisch also directed "When the Cat's Away" (1996).

75
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
Best of all, L'Auberge Espagnol uses Barcelona as a veritable character, a picturesque, vivacious place where, as one character puts it, ''No one eats before 10 p.m."

75
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
Does a beautiful job of capturing that mood -- the exuberance and wistfulness of one man's last year of youthful irresponsibility before joining the rat race.

75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
A lighthearted, good-natured motion picture that contains enough humor to leaven the tone and keep the drama from becoming too serious.

75
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
The atmosphere of gentle communal chaos is authentic enough to become the movie's dramatic center.

75
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
The movie also rather sweetly suggests that the apartment being shared is Europe itself. There's a reason this warm, stylish human comedy was a big hit all across the Continent: It conveys a new generation's conviction that borders no longer matter.

75
Chicago Tribune
Allison Benedikt
Klapisch frequently uses voiceovers to express Xaviers thoughts, and Duris expresses those thoughts beautifully, with a quirky open face, tuned perfectly to whatever his character is thinking.

70
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
The characters are well-observed and mercifully unrepresentative of their home countries. (Kevin Bishop is laugh-out-loud funny as a clueless British visitor who shows up to offend more than one national sensibility.)

70
Chicago Reader
Jennifer Vanasco
The film is a pleasant ramble through an eventful year. Klapisch's special effects--cameras speeding down hallways, superimposed images--are both amusing and annoying.

70
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
Presents an appealing and persuasive picture of European integration, in which national differences, which once sparked military and political conflict, are preserved because they make life sexier and more interesting.

63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
A film whose limitations are the same as its appeal: It's a bauble. Running at barely more than 80 minutes, the film is both a travelogue and a commercial for swinging polyglot Europe.

60
TV Guide
Ken Fox
The real stars of the film are Francois Emmanuelli's vibrant production design, Klapisch's flair with inventive optical effects and above all Barcelona itself, captured here in all its baroque brilliance.

60
The New Republic
Stanley Kauffmann
The pace is fairly hectic, which it needs to be. (Mustn't linger on bubbles.) The performances are warm, especially the tender Judith Godrèche as the doctor's wife.

58
Portland Oregonian
Kim Morgan
While breezy and fun, the film is also flimsy and sloppy in style and content.

50
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
At times, writer-director Cedric Klapsich seems to be trying to copy the frestyle of "Amelie," but L'Auberge achieves only a fraction of its charm.

50
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Beware of movies whose creators boast of the little effort involved. Little reward is what you're likely to get.

40
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
A dodgy, hit-or-miss affair that never quiet seems to gel: too many lumpy bits, and not enough crème.

38
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Movies can certainly be worse than bad sitcoms, and this is one of them.

30
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
Klapisch wants his characters shiny bright, and winds up making them excruciatingly dull in the process. Watching L'Auberge Espagnole is like seeing the young Maoist revolutionaries of Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 "La Chinoise" body-snatched by the international touring company of "Up With People."

30
Village Voice
Jessica Winter
Cédric Klapisch has been compared to Truffaut, but the new-waver's weakness for glib sentimentalism seems to have left the biggest impression on L'Auberge Espagnole.


The average user rating for this movie is 9.2 (out of 10) based on 21 User Votes
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