Chi­nese Puzzle

Cédric Klapisch knows how to gath­er a cork­ing cast: Romain Duris, go-to-Gal­lic-guy for char­ac­ters both ami­able and dash­ing; Audrey Tautou, who will always be dust­ed with Amélie’s pix­ie dust; the patri­ot­i­cal­ly named Cécile De France, a for­mer Dar­d­enne broth­ers’ lead­ing lady; and to keep things transat­lantic, Kel­ly Reil­ly, whose sear­ing per­for­mance as the sui­ci­dal daugh­ter of a priest in Cal­vary is still fresh in our minds.

Togeth­er this ensem­ble, who are indi­vid­u­al­ly com­fort­able both dra­mat­i­cal­ly and comed­ical­ly, work like a well-oiled and like­able machine that also hap­pens to be damn sexy. Cast­ing is where Klapisch played his ace when this tril­o­gy began in 2002 with L’Auberge Espagnole.

New York is the key loca­tion this third and final time in the globe-trot­ting mini fran­chise. Barcelona was the set­ting in L’Auberge Espag­nole while St Peters­burg and Moscow loomed large in Russ­ian Dolls. For any­one won­der­ing why the final title hasn’t more in com­mon with An Amer­i­can Tail, think Chi­na­town (The New York dis­trict, not the Polan­s­ki noir) Xavier (Duris) hops over the pond from Paris to be close to his kid who has been tak­en by his ex-wife Wendy (Reil­ly) who is liv­ing with her Amer­i­can beau, John. John’s bulk and height is played off against a can­did reveal of Duris’ pint size for one of the most straight­for­ward laughs of what turns out to be an exhaust­ing ride.

As luck would have it, Xavier’s old­est, clos­est pal Isabelle (De France) has also moved to the big apple to cohab­it with her half-Chi­nese, half-Amer­i­can lover. This means he has her to lean on in addi­tion to the Skype pres­ence of ex-wife I, Mar­tine (Tautou) as he attempts to secure work, a res­i­dence and parental rights with nowt but an alien sta­tus to his New York name.

It’s a seri­ous sit­u­a­tion but, despite shar­ing one of its stars, Klapisch isn’t inter­est­ed in going all Dirty Pret­ty Things on us. His con­cerns are in crank­ing humour our of absurd capers and point­ing out as fre­quent­ly as pos­si­ble that New York is home to many cul­tures and each makes a dis­tinct life out of their patch of city. Unfor­tu­nate­ly his obser­va­tions about the con­flict and bus­tle of the metrop­o­lis are not par­tic­u­lar­ly rev­e­la­to­ry. A yel­low cab dri­ver gets involved in a bust-up, a reli­gious fam­i­ly pre­sume that Xavier is married.

Licen­tious­ness for char­ac­ters who are reflec­tive on remain­ing unset­tled in their for­ties is a source of nar­ra­tive glee and delight. But cam­era and char­ac­ters rarely savour their encoun­ters mak­ing them feel like rushed notes on Klapisch’s lib­er­al lean­ings. A stand-out scene shows Mar­tine, Audrey Tautou and indeed the sex­u­al con­fi­dence of old­er women in an invig­o­rat­ing light.

Moments like these are a rar­i­ty amid, the bus­tle, noise, hi-jinx, coin­ci­dences, hare-brained schemes and still more capers than clam­our through­out the run-time. Entire sub-plots and char­ac­ters could have been sac­ri­ficed and still this good-natured, per­ma-cranked-up-to-11 rom-com would have been too noisy for some.