What to Watch on Netflix to Help Language Learning – The New York Times

But perhaps youre looking for something a little more, er, conversational? Heres where another great lockdown pastime streaming comes in. Services such as Netflix play host to hundreds of foreign-language films and television shows, including cartoons, cheesy rom-coms and award-winning movies.

For absolute beginners, watching with English subtitles should help you pick up the sounds and rhythms of the new language, an important part of learning. If youre a more advanced learner, switching the subtitles to the original language will offer new vocabulary, colloquialisms and the differences between formal and informal modes of address. (For foreign films and shows that play dubbed in English, you can usually switch back to the original language.)

Searching streaming services for foreign-language offerings can be frustrating. Netflix, for example, often yields only a part of its library and a glut of mediocre movies. Heres a selection of excellent television series and a few movie gems in French, German, Italian and Spanish the most popular languages on Duolingo to get you through the next weeks. All links are for American Netflix libraries.

FrenchA Very Secret Service

Stream it here.

This satirical spy series is set in 1960s France, a world in which the self-important agents of the French secret service are all men, the women are busty and secretarial, and colonialism still reigns. (An African delegations demand for independence and representative democracy is greeted by uproarious French laughter.) The tone is tongue-in-cheek, but the dialogue is straightforward and often repeated to allow time for the thick-witted, officious agents to absorb a point, and the language is relatively formal and classic. Je ne dis rien, mais soyez discret, (I wont say anything, but be careful,) a secretary tells the hapless new recruit, Andr Merlaux (Hugo Becker), when she discovers that he is still working an unacceptable 20 minutes after the day has ended.

Stream it here.

An addictive portrayal of a high-end Parisian talent agency, this series (called Dix Pour Cent in French) combines aspects of Entourage and The Office: It offers famous-face cameos (Nathalie Baye, Isabelle Adjani and Juliette Binoche), office intrigue and hilarity. The show stands out for the competence and devotion of its four principal characters and its offbeat, endearing portrayals of its celebrity guests. The dialogue is often colloquial and rapid-fire, however, and you may need to switch on the English subtitles fairly frequently. On the other hand, youll know exactly how to say What an idiot! in French after an episode or two.

Stream it here.

David Gelbs series profiling some of the worlds most famous culinary figures includes four episodes devoted to French chefs. The quartet (Alain Passard, Alexandre Couillon, Adeline Grattard and Michel Troisgros) talk about their favorite produce, their craft and their love of cooking in mostly simple language, with occasional poetic asides. Youll learn a lot of vegetable names, and the food footage is mouthwatering and gorgeous.

If youre looking for a French movie:

The French film selection on American Netflix isnt great. For language learning, Lady J, a sort of Liaisons Dangereuses; and Un Plus Une, a colorful romantic comedy, are your best bets.

SpanishThe Distinguished Citizen

Stream it here.

Oscar Martnez deservedly won the best actor award at the 2016 Venice Film Festival for his portrayal of Daniel Mantovani, an Argentine writer who visits his hometown after 40 years of living in Europe. Directed by Mariano Cohn and Gastn Duprat, The Distinguished Citizen is a droll and increasingly dark tale. The screenplay ticks along at a measured pace, and its easy to hear and focus on the language. The film also offers an opportunity to notice the differences between spoken European and Argentine Spanish.

Stream it here.

This 2016 film by the Chilean director Pablo Larran (Jackie) mixes fact and fiction in depicting the 1948 flight of the beloved Chilean poet and prominent leftist politician, Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco). When the Communist Party, which Neruda represents in Parliament, is banned, the poet and his wife Delia go into hiding, chased by a grimly determined cop (Gael Garca Bernal). A curious bond forms between the pair as Neruda manages to deftly, and rather fantastically, keep a step ahead. The Spanish here is, given its literary hero, often challenging. A good idea might be to watch it with English subtitles, then watch it again with Spanish captioning. There is more than enough text and subtext to justify two viewings.

Stream it here.

Its easy to see why this binge-worthy series is Netflixs most-watched non-English-language show. Money Heist (called La Casa de Papel in Spanish) is a stylish, breathlessly paced and witty show, employing all sorts of visual tricks flashbacks, unreliable narration, bizarre costumes and bold graphics to tell the story of a supercool cast of thieves who use city names as their aliases. The only danger here is that youll be too impatient to know what happens next to rewind and check your Spanish comprehension.

Other possibilities:

Netflixs Spanish-language film selection is pretty good, and several are great candidates for more advanced language immersion: Alfonso Cuarns Y Tu Mam Tambien, from 2001, and his 2018 Oscar-winning Roma are both available to stream, as is the 1998 Argentine crime drama, Pizza, Beer and Smokes, a milestone debut from Bruno Stagnaro and Adrin Caetano that signaled the beginning of the New Argentine Cinema movement.

ItalianHappy as Lazzaro

Stream it here.

Alice Rohrwacher directed this 2018 film, which earned rave reviews and a best screenplay award at that years Cannes Film Festival. Its a visually beautiful, narratively powerful account of a rural community called Inviolata, where sharecroppers farm tobacco and lentils. The young hero, Lazzaro (Adriano Tardiolo), is either a little simple or a little saintly, meeting bullying with unfailing contentment. The film is consistently compelling and easy to follow even as it swerves away from the countryside and into magic realism, and the language has a kind of poetic clarity. Cosa ve ne fate delle lampadine con la luna bella che avete qua? asks a farmworker. (Why do you need light bulbs with the beautiful moon you have here?)

Stream it here.

This gripping series is based on the neo-noir film Suburra (also on Netflix), and it offers a deep dive into the murky intersections between organized crime, Italian politics and religion. The language is formal among politicians and priests, slangier and more difficult to follow with the gangsters. Theres also a great mix of vocabulary (and curse words), gripping story lines and gorgeous views of Rome and the seaside community of Ostia, where shady characters fight over the valuable land that can be turned into a casino. (You will definitely learn the word for corruption.)

Other suggestions:

Welcome Mr. President! features the Italian comedian Claudio Bisio as Giuseppe Garibaldi, a librarian who happens to share his name with the 19th-century general and who is accidentally elected president of Italy. (You will also learn the word corruption here.)

Another recent series, The App, offers a glamorous hero and even more glamorous settings, as the wealthy Nick becomes obsessed with a dating app. Theres more style than substance, but the language is uncomplicated and youll learn terms like relazione a lungo termine (long-term relationship), relazione a breve termine (short-term relationship), and chat erotica (that one is pretty self-explanatory).

Stream it here.

A dark murder mystery in six parts, Perfume is inspired by the 1985 novel by Patrick Sskind, transposed from 18th-century France to contemporary Germany. Like the original, the plot involves a murdered woman and an obsession with scent, but the screen version focuses on a group of friends who went to school with the victim. It begins slowly and conventionally, with a slow burn, and its silence-punctuated dialogue and character-focused scenes make it a good candidate for absorbing the rhythms and vocabulary of daily conversations. Warning: The series doesnt shy away from sex or gore.

Stream it here.

Based on best-selling novels by Volker Kutscher, this buzzy show is now in its third season. Set in Weimar-era Berlin and filmed with exquisite attention to 1920s period detail, the story begins with the arrival of a police detective from Cologne, the morphine-addicted Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch), who has come to investigate a sadomasochistic pornography ring. Babylon Berlin offers a dazzling stew of police procedural, spy thrills, political unrest and hedonistic nighttime pleasures. Although heavy Berlin accents abound, the dialogue and vocabulary are mostly fairly easy to follow with subtitles.

Stream it here.

This silly but entertaining movie is one of the many remakes of the 1987 film, Three Men and a Baby. This time we have three bachelor brothers of Turkish descent, running a failing bridal shop in Frankfurt. They find themselves looking after a baby when the former girlfriend of one of them is involved in a car accident. Everything goes sort of wrong, but also sort of right, and neither the dialogue nor the plot is too challenging. (A diaper, by the way, is eine Windel.)

Other options:

If you like horror movies, the new Netflix series Freud turns the young and as-yet-unsuccessful Sigmund (Robert Finster), into a kind of Viennese Sherlock Holmes, addicted to cocaine and hunting down a serial killer. The series is dark and fantastical, with Freud who has a strong Austrian accent in German battling inner demons, outer evils and dastardly villains. But if you liked Penny Dreadful, this could be for you.

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What to Watch on Netflix to Help Language Learning - The New York Times