Cédric Klapisch’s Chinese Puzzle is all about the relationship struggles of beautiful, basically well-off Europeans. Their lives remain enviable even when they’re screwed up, romantically charmed even when their futures may seem hopeless. That said, this multicultural, multi-lingual flight of fancy is an effortlessly enjoyable comedy.
The story is the third in Klapisch’s so-called Apartment Trilogy, which includes 2002’s L’Auberge Espagnole and 2005’s Russian Dolls. Chinese Puzzle revisits its ensemble of one-time cohabitators from those two movies as they’re turning 40. Its central protagonist, Xavier (Romain Duris), and his partner Wendy (Kelly Reilly) are splitting up; she’s met someone else in New York and has decided to relocate there, bringing their two children in tow.
Xavier accepts the breakup but not the distance from his kids, so he flies to the Big Apple on a tourist visa, crashes with his lesbian pal Isabelle (Cécile de France), and tries to turn his visit into a permanent stay by any means necessary—which includes counseling from a shady lawyer, a job that pays under-the-table salary, and even a sham marriage to secure citizenship. All the while, he’s writing a novel, called Chinese Puzzle, which becomes a literary repository for his life’s dramatic upheavals.
From its clever title sequence onward, Chinese Puzzle is predicated on the metaphor of stranded narrative shards looking for linkages — the complementary pieces needed to form a complete picture of Xavier’s future. As a writer-director, Klapisch’s brightly colored style is, itself, a puzzle of influences. Comparisons to Francois Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel films are inevitable, particularly given the character of Xavier, who seems to be perpetually coming of age.
Other points of reference include Judd Apatow’s This is 40 and Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight, both of which return to characters from previous films as midlife looms, though Chinese Puzzle isn’t as funny as the former or as naturalistic as the latter. Its best comparison may be to the sitcom Friends, with its good humor, fantasy apartments, romantic couplings and decouplings, and absence of earth-shattering consequence.
But what it lacks in profundity, Chinese Puzzle makes up for in stylistic panache. It’s a fine example of a foreigner’s view of New York City, looking anew at this clogged, crazy metropolis we take for granted, from oppressive subway excursions to its senseless street grids and angry cabbies. And the fourth-wall-breaking surreality that accompanied the previous films in this series is on view here as well, from a montage presented in paper-cutout animation to porno-mag images springing to life in Xavier’s mind, to dead philosophers who reappear in his apartment to dispense cryptic advice, Annie Hall-style. There’s even a flawlessly executed, farcical climax in which all of the “pieces” of Xavier’s life converge in a small room, through windows and doors and in rooftops and hallways.
This is the comic apex of Chinese Puzzle, and the less said about the ludicrous scenes following it, the better. Suffice it to say that for an eternal optimist like Klapisch, there can’t be a truly negative outcome to this Puzzle, no matter how scattered and disconnected its narrative pieces may seem; we know that in the end, no matter where and how and with whom they’ll end up, its characters will still be young, pretty, carefree Parisians.
CHINESE PUZZLE. Director: Cédric Klapisch; Cast: Romain Duris, Cecile de France, Audrey Tautou, Kelly Reilly, Sandrine Holt; Distributor: StudioCanal; Rating: R; in French and English. Opens: Today at Movies of Lake Worth, Movies of Delray, Regal Shadowood 16 and Living Room Theaters in Boca Raton, Sunrise Eleven in Sunrise, and Coral Gables Art Cinema.