Los amantes pasajeros/ I'm So Excited!

Sunday 21st April 2013

My mum “I’ll call you on Tuesday.

Me: I won’t be home, I’m going to see an advanced screening of the new Almodovar film.

My mum: I thought you didn’t like Almodovar...
Me: It’s not that I don’t like him, it’s just that I don’t like everything that he does... I like his early stuff a lot...”

“The new Almodovar film”, called “I’m so Excited” in English is about “A technical failure has endangered the lives of the people on board Peninsula Flight 2549. The pilots are striving, along with their colleagues in the Control Center, to find a solution. The flight attendants and the chief steward are atypical, baroque characters who, in the face of danger, try to forget their own personal problems and devote themselves body and soul to the task of making the flight as enjoyable as possible for the passengers, while they wait for a solution. Life in the clouds is as complicated as it is at ground level, and for the same reasons, which could be summarized in two: sex and death.”  Trailer here.

All this somewhat reminded me of The Foo Fighters’ Learn to Fly video.

The original title is “Los Amantes Pasajeros”. Pasajero has 2 meanings: it means passenger, but also “brief” or “in passing”.

They could be lovers who are (plane) passengers, and/or lovers for a very short time.

This double meaning works in most if not all Romance languages: Spanish, obviously, but also French (Les amants passagers), Italian (Gli amanti passeggeri) and Portuguese (Os Amantes Passageiros). And I would also bet that the Romanian title works too (Amantii pasageri) although my Romanian isn’t good enough to be certain of it (I don’t speak Romanian, before you ask).

I checked titles in Slavic languages in very often really silly and inaccurate Google translate , but they all only seem to be able to render 1 meaning: either the brevity of the encounter (passing), or the nature of the lovers (passengers).

Although I did ask a friend how he would translate the Polish title "Przelotni kochankowie" into English, and he said “fleeting (or passing) lovers. Przelotny is like short-lived”.

To me, “Fleeting lovers” would have been a good translation, as it would have kept the short-lived aspect of the original title, but also, using “fleet” alluded to planes (or boats or whatever) thus keeping some of the “passenger” aspect too.

Which made me wonder why pick “I’m so Excited” as a title over something alluding to planes or passengers (and Estonia did the same if I trust GTranslate with “Olen nii elevil”).

Then I couldn't get this stupid song out of my head.

Then I finally did get it out and I got to the cinema last night and someone decided to have the song as background noise.

Then they played the film.

And right in the middle, there is said song, with the best and funniest choreography I have seen in ages. And I laughed. A lot.

The film is very very funny.

After the film, there was a Q&A session with Almodovar, and someone asked him how he ended up with that specific song in the film, and Pedro explained that when he sent the film to the international distributor they realised that there was no easy translation in English. He explained (see above) the double meaning of the word “pasajero”.

His solution was to include the (damn) song, because he wanted a song that the 3 main characters (who are gay/bi) would be passionate about, he wanted something disco, because they are “flamboyant” (in Almodovar’s words), but not something as cliché as I Will Survive. He also thought that as excited also took the sense of horny, that would fit the film's theme quite well.

This is how he got to film one of the funniest scenes I have seen in ages (despite that annoying song) and how the film got its “international English title” (and its Estonian one).