Butler's Cinema Scene

Romain Duris…new guy in New York

“CHINESE PUZZLE” My rating: B (Opens July 25 at the Tivoli)

117 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Chinese Puzzle” is the third film in a series that began in 2002 with “L’Auberge Espangnol,” about a group of college  foreign exchange students living in a Barcelona boarding house.

Writer/director Cedric Klapisch checked in on those same characters as they turned 30 in 2005’s “Russian Dolls.”

“Chinese Puzzle,” the third installment, finds the characters hitting 40 and no more at ease in matters of love than they were as adolescents.

Caplisch’s films are less well known than the celebrated “Seven Up” documentary series (which has followed a group of former British schoolchildren for half a century) or Richard Linklater’s “Before…” films that periodically revisit lovers played by Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke.

But as with those other efforts, Klapisch’s films are bit like a reunion with old friends. The characters may be fictional, but there’s something oddly moving about watching the same actors play the same characters at different stages in life.

As “Chinese Puzzle” begins, Klapisch’s central character, Xavier (Romain Duris), has achieved a degree of fame as a novelist. He and his former college housemate, the British Wendy (Kelly Reilly), are married with two kids. Xavier still hangs with his best friend, the tomboyish lesbian Isabelle (Cecile De France).

He thinks life is swell. So he’s floored when Wendy returns from a business trip to New  York and announces that she’s met someone and is moving to the U.S. — and taking the children.

When Isabelle announces that she, too, has fallen for a New Yorker and is immigrating,  Xavier figures there’s not much left for him in Paris.  He jumps the pond.

“Chinese Puzzle” — that’s how Xavier describes his knottily confusing life — is a round robin of friendships and potential romances. Not to mention a comedy of dislocation as the Gallic Xavier learns to negotiates the brave new world of NYC.

Xavier and his women: (left to right) Cecile De France, Romain Duris, Kelly Reilly, Audrey Tautou

Rooming in Brooklyn with Isabelle and her new woman (Sandrine Holt), Xavier is perplexed at having to cover for his old friend’s continuing womanizing. And in one of the film’s many subplots, he becomes the sperm donor for Isabelle’s planned pregnancy. (Let me profess here my love for De France’s Isabelle, who is both sexy and hilarious — perhaps because she’s such a guy. In any case, if the real-life Miss De France requires a donor father, I stand ready to make a substantial contribution to the cause.)

Meanwhile Wendy is now married to an affable rich dude (Peter Hermann) with a penthouse view of Central Park. Threatened by Xavier’s presence, she’s just plain bitchy.

If he’s to remain a part of his kids’ lives, Xavier needs a green card. The quickest route is to marry an American. After he rescues a Chinese cabbie from a fight, the man’s grateful family proffers a niece (Li Jun Li) as a bride.  She and Xavier will wed in name only, and he’ll get to stay…provided they can outwit a suspicious immigration agent (Peter McRobbie).

While all this is unfolding, yet another face from Xavier’s past appears. The divorcée Martine (Audrey “Amelie” Tautou) and her two kids pay a visit to the Big Apple and romantic sparks are kindled.

Duris stumbles through the story in a constant state of perplexity, sometimes coming off as a Gallic Woody Allen.  In fact, there are several moments when Klapisch employs long tracking shots to follow Xavier as he runs down crowded New York sidewalks…these appear to have been plucked directly from Allen’s “Manhattan.” Heck, there’s even a scene shot beneath the 59th Street Bridge, which was featured on the “Manhattan” posters.

And the imaginary visits paid Xavier by classic philosophers like Hegel and Schopenhauer (in period hair and costumes) are right out of the Woody Allen playbook.

None of this is profound, and some of it is silly.  But it is comforting, gently sexy, and comical in ways that range from the rueful to the outrageous.

| Robert W. Butler