Xavier Rousseau (Romain Duris) would like to be a writer, although (much to the annoyance of his girlfriend Martine (Audrey Tautou)), he leaves for Barcelona to study economics for a year as an Erasmus scholar: a friend of his father's says a knowledge of Spanish will enable him to get a job at the Ministère des Finances. He finds himself sharing accommodation with other students: the Belgian Isabelle (Cécile de France), the English Wendy (Kelly Reilly), the Spanish Soledad (Cristina Brondo), the Italian Alessandro (Federico D'Anna), the German Tobias (Barnaby Metschurat) and the Danish Lars (Christian Pagh).
Trouble emerges when Wendy's boyfriend William comes to stay for short time with them: he is not only obviously immature, but part of that immaturity is clear from his steriotypical attitudes to those of other nationalities. Klapisch is depicting the problems many face in a multicultural world. However, William redeems himself later, when all the inmates draw together, but that's another story.
Xavier is at first attracted to Isabelle until he discovers she's lesbian, although she gives him lessons in seduction, and Xavier is soon in a love affair with Anne-Sophie (Judith Godrèche), the wife of a doctor who initially put him up for a few days until he found lodgings. Later, Martine breaks up with him, as does Anne-Sophie, and of course he's miserable.
At the end, Xavier (whose Spanish has made great improvements) is set on at the Ministère des Finances but he takes flight almost as soon as he gets there: he knows where his vocation lies. To be continued.
*The expression Auberge espagnole means a place where you only get what you bring to it, or a situation or idea in which a person believes what they want to believe.
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