ABSTRACT
This chapter will analyze The Spanish Apartment itself through a series of close sequence analyses and chart the various ways it incorporates its ‘youthful’ elements (music, visual style). The various strategies of mise-en-scène (editing tricks, fast cuts, split screens) reinforce the film’s playful and witty approach. The soundtrack ranges from Daft Punk to Radiohead to Chopin to suggest an interplay between tradition and innovation, rhythm and control, classicism and experimentation: all dichotomies that lie at the heart of The Spanish Apartment itself and, more obliquely, the European project as evoked by Klapisch. An exploration of the film’s inclusive identity politics and stereotypes will highlight the film’s positive take on difference. Xavier ends the film by deciding to become a writer rather than an economist, which suggests that his year in the ‘Spanish apartment’ has been a transformative one, both emotionally and professionally.
