TV Review: Salade grecque (Greek Salad)
7/10: Good. Cedric Klapisch’s Salade grecque is an eight-episode TV series depicting the varied events of a group of young Europeans living in downtown Athens. Throughout the series, siblings Tom and Mia learn about each other’s secrets, and become stronger versions of each other, while making friends throughout the way. It is an indirect continuation of an earlier film trilogy of Klapisch’s, L’Auberge espagnole.
How the once-pretentious have fallen in favour of content: Chris Reads has moved to writing about books, to writing about movies, to writing about web-novels, to writing about TV series. Chris Reads, once the last champion of literature and bastion of TV hate. Oh, but this TV show sits dear in my heart, a blast of nostalgia and a yearning for my youthful desires. Yet it takes more than nostalgia and valuable IP in order to create a successful nostalgia trap. No, as Star Wars, That Nineties Show, and Mad Max: Fury Road have taught us, it requires a fantastic standalone production that also manages to add something new to the original universe.
I first chanced upon this show when I went over to my partner’s place, and she was in the middle of the third episode. The first thing I recognized was that it took place mostly in French. I’ll watch most French media just to improve my French, so I continued watching. After learning the name, I made a comment about how it was probably also an expression meaning something in French, similar to L’Auberge espagnole. Then, I saw Kelly Reilly’s face on the cover of a book in the show. As I was putting two and two together, the siblings have arrived home in France to the smiling face of Romain Duris. The wave of feelings that swelled in me might have culminated in a squeak.
The original movie, L’Auberge espagnole, or The Spanish Apartment, was one of two seminal movies in my life that had led to my desire to become a writer. The movie is about a young French man who goes on exchange to Barcelona and has a life-changing experience while meeting people from all around Europe, and returns to Paris to reject his corporate job and become a writer. It led me to expect a great deal more out of exchange than I had any right to and captured the soul of the Erasmus generation of Europe, a web of international friendships made through European exchange programs. The movie spawned two more sequels, Russian Dolls and Chinese Puzzle, both to varying success, and I thought that was the end of it.
So imagine my delight when I realized that Salade grecque was a continuation of L’Auberge espagnole, with the original cast as parents this time around. Though it is very much its own story, involving a different set of protagonists, it maintains intercultural European friendships as its primary theme. Romantic relationships and infidelity is another theme: the male protagonist moves through three love interests in the eight episodes, and I’ve completely lost track of how many his father has gone through over the span of the original movie trilogy. Travel and culture shock is another important theme, though it leans less heavily into the idea that travel itself is life-changing.
Then, there are things it does much better than the original. I think there was one Spanish character in the main cast of L’Auberge espagnole, but a lot of effort is placed to include many Greek ones in Salade grecque. There is more diversity in the television series reflecting perhaps a changed European landscape than the one of twenty-five years ago: we have a transexual male played by a transexual male actor, we have racialized characters that play an important role, as well as Eastern Europeans. The original was ahead of its time in its treatment of its lesbian character, which was more than just a stereotype, but we have even more diversity in the show and Europe now.
There was one scene in L’Auberge espagnole where the protagonist played by Romain Duris, cheats on his girlfriend to seduce a married woman despite her telling him to stop. Though it didn’t register with me when I first saw it, in subsequent rewatches it always struck me as very uncomfortable, to the point where I’ve stopped rewatching it. I would like to believe that Klapisch addresses it in Salade grecque by including rape, albeit more explicit, as a part of the plot, and showing the harm it has on the female protagonist, especially when the rape is shown to be dismissed by authorities. I scoured the internet for anything that discusses the actions of the protagonist in L’Auberge espagnole, any hint of Klapisch discussing it, or viewer outrage, but all I found was discussion on a forum, and an analysis of how language shaped the encounter.
In this, as well as many other aspects, such as a more in-depth examination of sexual diversity instead of merely making a character gay, a discussion of the refugee crisis in Europe, as well as death, Salade grecque is a more topical, more grown-up version of L’Auberge espagnole, which focuses mostly on young Europeans drinking and discovering themselves in Barcelona. The most touchy political topics were perhaps Catalonian independence and the gay character. Perhaps there is no longer a place in the world for an innocent French movie about infidelity, travel, and self-discovery. Or perhaps youth these days are much more aware of social issues and aligned with them, and connect less with fluff pieces.
Whatever it was, I was glad that they made Salade grecque: it maintained the integrity and theme of the original, while creating a entrée for the new generation. I’m too biased to have an opinion of the show as a standalone piece, but I feel like it was at least passable. Not good enough for me to start watching the series from the beginning, but a nice piece of nostalgia all the same. The kicker for me was when the character played by Romain Duris started discussing a television adaptation of the novel that he wrote: and it L’Auberge espagnole.
In the end, I guess I was just happy to see that the fictional characters I had identified with so much with, and invested so much into were thriving. They reminisced about their summer in Barcelona, their memories and mistakes. They saw their children having similar arguments that they had, and laughed. In a way, I felt good seeing that everything worked out for them, and it made me realize that everything will work out in the end for me as well.
