As bestas

Forced castellano subtitles are a must!

A french couple in rural galicia, what could go wrong? well, from a language point of view, lots. The locals speak gallego amongst themselves, the french couple french, and when the two groups interact, some mix of castellano, gallego and french.

Since gallego is so close to castellano and can be on either side of intelligible, forced spanish/castellano subs are necessary to tell which is which ... unless you're gallego is up to the task ... but then there's the french, too. My library's copy only had english subs for everything or no subs at all. rtve has it for free, if your connection comes from within spain, and it has forced castellano subs (in castellano and only for the non castellano dialogue). Thinking I'd give my middling french a whirl, I first tried without any subs and was quickly annoyed with the gallego since I couldn't quite follow it as it flitted in and out of understandability. So I switched to rtve and all was well with the world, except in the movie where everything was going very, very wrong.

On the plus side, the castellano is middle of the road, largely because the french didn't speak it with any great complexity and the only castellano spoken was in conversation with them. There is also not a huge amount of it as it has to compete with two other languages.

If your castellano, french AND gallego aren't all good or you can't get a copy with forced castellano subs, then I can't recommend this for learning. It is, however, a very good, almost great, film.