Costa-Gavras, Languages, and Beautiful Women

Just finished watching Le Couperet by Costa-Gavras, a movie which satirizes (albeit quite morbidly) the competitive nature of corporate society, based on a Westlake novel ("The Ax"). I had the Spanish DVD, which dubbed it Arcadia. This is important, because the extra features were decidedly in Spanish rather than Greek (Costa-Gavras's native language) or French or the like.

What amazed me, as a linguophile (and a poor speaker of languages) was not only how elegantly he spoke Spanish--with his own sing-songy flavor, of course--but how blithely he brushed past the mistakes he made. He said 'haga' instead of 'hace,' 'donna' instead of 'mujer,' and 'corpo' instead of 'cuerpo' (which makes me think he knows Italian better than Spanish), and yet, rather than detract from anything he might be saying, it rather enhanced it. His confidence and ease conveyed that he was more concerned with ideas than hypercorrection--which is a quality I envy, I suppose.

Incidentally, one of the main actresses reminds me of a character from L'Auberge Espagnol, eh?


Karin Viard (Marlène Davert, Le Couperet)








Kelly Reilly (Wendy, L'Auberge Espagnol)