A Movie in Spanish? Not Quite

Since the beginning of 2019, we have been going to the movies most Thursday nights here in San Sebastian. Thursday is when the main local theater shows movies in their original version with Spanish subtitles, as opposed to dubbed into Spanish. As is normal for Spain, movies are much cheaper than in the states - only about $16 for both of us. (The price is even cheaper on Wednesdays, but there are hardly any movies in English scheduled then.)

This past Thursday, since the English-language movie we had yet to see did not appeal to us much (Mary Queen of Scots), we decided to go see La Clase de Piano, a French movie. Of course, since we don't speak French at all, we would be reading the Spanish subtitles for an entire movie. We thought this was a good test of our Spanish for several reasons: (1) the movie had a lot of music in it, so there was less dialogue than in other movies; (2) the story was familiar (kid from a poor family with a great talent gets a chance to show his genius - very Good Will Hunting-like); and (3) subtitles are much easier than "regular" Spanish because they often have to be shortened/simplified so the viewer can keep up with the pace of the dialogue.

So, how did we do? We were very happy with our ability to understand virtually all of the subtitles. There were a couple of scenes with very quick back-and-forth dialogue, which was a bit difficult, and there were some technical musical terms that we missed, but overall we felt we understood 80-85% of the dialogue/subtitles. We still don't think we are ready to see a movie in Spanish, but a foreign movie with Spanish subtitles does appear to be within our grasp.

By the way, the movie was not great. Not worth seeing in any language, unless perhaps you really like classical music.

Hasta luego,

Jeff and Shana