Maidgethma Wonderfully offbeat film!

2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Christopher Culver CASSE-TETE CHINOIS (Chinese Puzzle, 2013) is the third film in Cédrich Klapisch's series on globalization and growing older. It began with L'Auberge espagnole, which saw Xavier Rousseau (Romain Duris), a 25 year-old university student and aspiring writer, spending a wild year in Barcelona with other exchange students from throughout Europe. The second film Les poupées russes revisited Xavier as he turns 30 and has still not established a writing career or found a stable relationship. Its happy ending with Xavier settling down with former Erasmus companion Wendy (Kelly Reilly) seemed to augur well for the future.But as Casse-Tete Chinois opens, we find that Xavier's relationship with Wendy collapsed ten years into their marriage. Wendy has left Paris for New York, where she has met another man, and takes their two children with her. Xavier follows them to New York to be closer to his children, but Wendy has turned cold and hostile. His lesbian pal Isabelle (Cécile de France) is also there, and Xavier has helped her and her lover have a child. On the threshold of 40, Xavier finds that his life is just as complicated as ever. The film follows Xavier adjusting to a new life in the United States, searching for a flat and a job, and dealing with a bitter custody battle. With all this on his plate, his old ex Martine (Andrey Tatou), now a import-export businesswoman dealing with organic products, drops in with her two children too.In commenting on this series of films, Cédric Klapisch has said that he wants to capture the fact that Xavier's and younger generations are very mobile, and for them it's commonplace to go to another country to work/study or enter into a relationship with someone of a different nationality. Here this mobility is explored through several French people in New York, and New York with its wealth and myriad immigrant communities is treated as a very distinct place from the United States in general. Nothing at all is seen or heard of the Spanish flatmates from the first film, who at least got a bit part in the second film. I think that's rather a shame, we could have at least got a few lines of dialogue about how William (Kevin Bishop), whose marriage to a Russian woman was the whole setup for the second film, is getting on.I enjoyed revisiting some of these characters again after nearly a decade, and Duris's acting is admirable: his Xavier remains the manchild we know and love, but he captures the impact of the years. Cécile de France is again so convincing in her role that one wonders if she really is like this in real life. The script, however, strikes me as rather weak. There's a strange side plot of adultery, where a character appallingly cheats on their lover and the other characters hardly object, and it ends up with almost the exact same scene of everyone racing to an apartment to warn the trysting pair as in the first film.Still, the series as a whole remains worth seeing and an important commentary on the contemporary world. I hope Klapisch will continue Xavier's story in a few more years.

johnnymurphy15 What I did not realise when watching this was the fact that this is the third in a long running trilogy with the films 'Pot Luck' and 'Russian Dolls' being the previous films all directed by Cedric Klapisch.When reading of this revelation after I viewed the film, it made perfect sense as to why there were pictures of the characters in three stages of ageing in the opening credit sequence and why there are characters who drop into the film suddenly like we are supposed to know them. However, as a person who did not see the two previous films, I did get to know the many characters quite well and I did care about them in what I thought was a surprisingly enjoyable film.Romain Duris stars as Xavier, a man whose relationship with Wendy (Kelly Reilly) ends. Wendy meets a man in New York and takes the children with her. Xavier makes a snap decision to move to New York to be with his kids. He initially stays with his lesbian friend Isabelle (Cecile De France) who moved to New York to be with her lover, Ju (Sandrine Holt), who is also having an affair with her babysitter who is also named Isabelle (Flore Bonaventura). Also, Xavier's past lover, Martine (Audrey Tautou) keeps dropping into New York for work related reasons and meets up with Xavier a few times. Could they start to re-kindle what they had before?The great thing about Chinese Puzzle is it's portrait of New York which it shows in all it's racial and sexual diversity, but not feeling forced or annoyingly politically correct. It felt more like this is the reality of New York being the crowded and multi cultural city that it is. It is refreshing to see New York portrayed in that way as opposed to post card aesthetics used by many, especially Woody Allen. It also shows the difficulties Xavier faces trying to stay in New York and fitting into a strange city. He meets interesting people, gets cash in hand jobs as his holiday visa deems it illegal for him to be in employment, and he gets married to an Asian-American girl in order to stay in the country. It is compelling to watch his character settle in, develop and grow in his new place of residence and how he gets involved with the main characters around him in these intertwining stories. The stories were interesting and it had me routing for the characters, who despite their flaws, are genuinely believable and likable characters. What did end up annoying me about the film was the fact that it went for the cliché narrative-within-a-narrative structure. While the story is unfolding, Xavier is writing a book about his experiences and his agent is commenting on his ideas. When the story threads culminate into a last minute dash to get the girl who is taking a bus out of New York for good, the agent comments on how the ending is too happy and cliché. For me, this self awareness is worse than just having the cliché ending. For the most part, it was enjoyable and it meant well.Check out my film review blog - www.projectionistreview.wordpress.com

Andrew Morrison A very entertaining movie. Romantic comedy. French with subtitles.Inappropriate for young people - lots of bad language, sex, and one violent scene.Excellent cast including Romain Duris, Audrey Tatou, Cecile De France, and Kelly Reilly.40 year old author's life keeps getting more and more complicated - an ex-girlfriend and another ex-girlfriend and a gay girl friend and her girlfriends and the first one's kids and the second one's kids and the third one's kid - several of which are his - and the City of New York stars in in this one.Try it. I liked it.

aharmas Audrey Tautou and Romain Duris might not reach the heights of Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, or the lighter, more down-to-earth "Four Weddings and a Funeral"... "Chinse Puzzle" is neither ultra-sophisticated or really funny, but it is amusing, with a different perspective for romantic comedies, giving us a rawer and truly different take on the way men and women understand each other. For starters, where do you go after being together for ten years with a woman from another country? You just jump on the first plane and cross the ocean! It's at this moment you leave all sense of logic behind because a seemingly successful writer in Paris becomes an apparently broken foreigner who must find some contrived maneuvers to survive in the Big Apple. I guess they needed some color and a bit of a "ethnic" atmosphere here. I think it would have been easier just to keep matters simple. The different relationships would have worked on their own, mostly on the chemistry of the principal cast. However, if our hero has to struggle, then we can bring INS in and really complicate things.Xavier is best friends with a lesbian, but he and his wife can't truly communicate, break up and somehow it is better when they're apart. The dialogue feels very strange when it's not even a combination of languages, but like seeing two people failing to communicate in a UN meeting. The children never speak English? What's the deal with writer's block, too? Throw in donating sperm for the lesbian couple, marrying a Chinese woman to stay in N.Y., and you come up with something entertaining, but that still feels half-cooked.With all these obstacles, it would seem impossible to like what appears to be a mess, but all the actors are very appealing, and there's something fresh about seeing French actors struggle in N.Y. They are always so sophisticated, dressed impeccably in the latest fashions, and here they are confused, emotionally unstable, not unleashing sophisticated charm on us, but appearing vulnerable and very likable.Tautou shines in her pedestrian outfits, even when she gets a dynamite scene dealing with a Chinese magnate and proves she is a formidable actress. She's lovely as she ages and shows her flaws. Cecile De France approaches her relationship in an aggressive but still appealing way. She's just free. It's also cool to have an ex-partner in a legal meeting who is not tearing the other apart. The only bad guy here appears to be the INS agent, but even he looks pretty understanding in the end.It's cool to see N.Y. from the immigrant's point of view, without drowning the story in sadness and tragedy or just making it too fluffy. Yes, it might be contrived, but it's still like a French soufflé, enjoyable and light, and maybe forgettable quite soon.