Filming the foreign exchange

The European Union's Erasmus student exchange programme might seem an unlikely focus for a film, but French director Cedric Klapisch has managed to get it on the big screen in his latest feature, Pot Luck ( L'Auberge Espagnole ), which opens in the UK today. It depicts the endless form-filling and bureaucracy Parisian graduate Xavier must endure before he is able to take a postgraduate economics course in Barcelona. And Erasmus himself pops up in Xavier's dreams after he embarks on a passionate affair with his friend's wife.