Les Poupées russes (2005) - film review

At 30, Xavier’s private life is as messy and unfulfilled as his professional life.  Unable to find a publisher for his novel "L’Auberge espagnole", he has ended up writing scripts for mediocre TV series and works as a ghost writer for a young supermodel. Xavier remains on good terms with his ex-girl friend, Martine, but hasn’t yet found a partner he can settle down with.  One day, he runs into William, the brother of a an English girl, Wendy, who was one of the students he shared a flat with when he was studying in Barcelona, five years before.  To Xavier’s surprise, the wayward William is about to get married – to a Russian dancer living in St Petersburg.   As he needs an English-speaking collaborator to work with him on his next script, Xavier decides to renew his acquaintance with Wendy.   It isn’t long before Cupid begins to work his magic – but can Wendy really be the girl for Xavier...?

It’s hardly surprising, giving the enormous success of L’Auberge espagnole (2002), that director Cédric Klapisch would make a sequel featuring the same menagerie of colourful characters.   In Les Poupées russes, Xavier and his former friends are no longer free-spirited penniless students but adult tax-paying professionals who, despite their best efforts, are gradually settling into the rut of middle age conformity.   Like all of Klapisch’s previous films, it’s a colourful and honest portrayal of modern life showing, with delicious irony, how difficult it is becoming for young people to settle down and find fulfilment in their lives.  

It may not be as original, coherent and satisfying as L’Auberge espagnole, but Les Poupées russes is a respectable follow-up, an enjoyable, typically Gallic take on the ever-popular "rom-com".  It’s perhaps a little disappointing that most of the characters of the original film are given so little screen time. Those that do make more than a fleeting visit (such as Cécile de France’s skirt-chasing Isabelle, who is evidently sponsored by the LGBT division of rent-a-cliché) appear to have been shoehorned in without much thought.  On the plus side, Romain Duris is terrific in his likeably gauche and moody persona Xavier, although the film ultimately belongs to the delightful Kelly Reilly who makes a triumphant return as Wendy, bringing an emotional depth, maturity and realism which is lacking elsewhere in the film.  It’s quite possible that we may not have seen the last of Xavier and his chums...

© James Travers 2008

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