The Spanish Apartment

This chapter will explore in detail the casting and filming context, production history and reception of The Spanish Apartment to better locate it within a broader discourse of ideas around cultural diversity and intercultural relationships. It will also look at the Erasmus scheme and demonstrate how its hyper-modern and pluralized notions, its emphasis on youth and youthfulness, and its founding myths of transnational togetherness feed into The Spanish Apartment via the mind-sets of the characters. The Spanish Apartment also focuses on the negative aspects of Erasmus — linguistic frustration, homesickness, the sense of being lost in a cocoon — while at the same time showing how these perceived downsides are all part of the process of the transition into adulthood undergone by Xavier. The chapter will also look at the various young actors involved in the project (Romain Duris, Cécile de France, Kelly Reilly and Audrey Tautou), all of whom are now established European actors, and look more closely at the city of Barcelona itself as a backdrop for Klapisch’s micro-and macro-narratives.