The Russian Dolls (Poupées russes, Les)

I caught this last night without any prior know­ledge of the story­line, pre­mise or Cédric Kla­pisch except that I recog­ni­sed the title “L’Auberge espag­nole”, a phrase that comes in refe­rence to Klapisch’s pre­vious film. The trai­ler doesn’t paint the per­fect pic­ture; it is a love story that tells us to avoid clichés in wri­ting before thro­wing them back at us in a delight­fully unpre­dic­ta­ble fashion. Xavier Rous­seau remin­ded me of Tomas in The Unbea­ra­ble Light­ness of Being adap­ta­tion, maybe he just bears a like­ness to Daniel Day Lewis, but I could see Rous­seau calmly echoing that “Take off your clothes” catchph­rase. Kelly Reilly is delight­ful to watch. Dolls is an effu­sive trans-culture love tale that main­tains a heart­war­ming ques­tio­ning out­look on the great mys­tery without having to resort to mind­less sic­ke­ning sweet­ness akin to the colour pink. Such is, a self res­pec­ting movie goer can hap­pily watch a roman­tic comedy without nee­ding a buc­ket, and this is a sig­ni­fi­cant achie­ve­ment in its own right.