Michaele’s post reminded me of a recent French film, L’auberge espagnole — translated literally, “The Spanish Apartment.” It’s about a young Parisian named Xavier (Romain Duris) who decides to spend a year studying economics in Barcelona as part of the Erasmus exchange program. He soon finds himself in a rundown apartment populated by a host of European stereotypes: the neat-freak German and his clothes-sprawled-across-the-floor Italian roommate, the proud Spaniard driven into a tizzy by a bigoted Brit with a drinking problem, the hip Belgian lesbian who teaches the clueless-in-love Frenchman how to seduce a married woman … (okay, maybe that’s not so stereotypical). Xavier doesn’t end up learning much economics, but he learns quite a bit about life and love, the meaning of happiness and the meaninglessness of making money, how to kiss a woman while grabbing her left buttock in such a way as to drive her mad with passion, etc., etc. (Speaking of French movies, Audrey Tatou from Amelie is in it, playing Xavier’s left-at-home-girlfriend, but she has a total of 15 minutes of screen time devoted to rather un-Amelie-like pouting, so don’t see it just for her.)

After reading Michaele’s post, I was struck by how much the film is a metaphor for today’s European Union. Xavier decides to apply to Erasmus so that he can study economics, learn Spanish, and get a posh job in the French foreign-affairs bureaucracy; the first treaties establishing a European “community” in the 1950s were devoted solely to trade and a common economic policy. Xavier spends his time in Barcelona focusing on everything but his career: he becomes friends with people from around the continent, shatters some of his preconceptions about other cultures, and learns to see himself as, above all, European — in the end, he even loses his Amelie. Likewise, the EU has grown into something more than just a common currency and collection of integrated markets, and many Europeans today hope that its shared social and political values — democracy, secularism, an aversion to military solutions, a strong government role in providing health care and other vital services — will take precedence over its economic policy.

Right now, the dream of an integrated Europe is being fiercely debated across the continent. The European Constitution is up for ratification, and there are grave doubts that the populations of France and Great Britain, among other member states, will give it their blessing. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that even some die-hard opponents of the Constitution say they are actually in favor of a stronger European identity. At least among the left-wingers of the “No” crowd, their hostility to the Constitution has more to do with a belief that it is too supportive of free trade and outsourcing and too biased against the welfare state and the provision of public services. (In fact, ATTAC, one of the left-wing networks leading the charge in Europe against the Constitution, has insisted that their “No” vote is “authentically European and internationalist”; what they want is “another” kind of Constitution, one “founded upon values and goals other than competition and free trade.”)

What Europe will end up emerging is difficult to say. L’auberge espagnole evokes the youthful ideal of Europe: a delirious mixture of language and culture that, left for a few decades to cook, emerges as a delicate dish to be shared among friends (another translation of “L’auberge espagnole” is “Euro pudding”). From the point of view of the film, it’s interesting that Xavier, the son of divorced parents — a sentimental, hippie mother and a rigid, businessman father — starts off pursuing his father’s dream of material success but by the end of the film has drawn closer — tentatively — to his estranged mother. Give the Europeans a few more years and we may see something similar take place.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen