Starring: Romain Duris, Kevin Bishop and Audrey Tautou
Director: Cedric Klapisch (French with English subtitles)
Rated: M
RUSSIAN Dolls is a sequel of sorts.
Five years on, we take up with the students we met in The Spanish Apartment.
The group is reunited in St Petersburg for the wedding of one of their number, William (Kevin Bishop). He is marrying a Russian ballerina.
Xavier (Romain Duris) narrates the film (endlessly).
He has left high the finance world behind to become a creative writer. He is co-writing a soap opera romance for French and British television with Wendy, a London based scriptwriter and victim of physical abuse.
Xavier is also ghost writing the memoirs of supermodel Celia Shelburn (Lucy Gordon).
Xavier’s former girlfriend Martine (Audrey Tautou) now has a boy from another relationship. She is still in love with Xavier.
And the lesbian stockbroker Isabelle (Cecile de France) has made it on French TV as a business reporter.
If all this feels haphazard, then you have nailed Russian Dolls in one. The visual style of the film matches the chaotic narrative.
I am sure director Cedric Klapisch is trying to say something profound about the messy nature of maturation, but I just found the storyline in this film an endless jumble of half interesting ideas and events.
Most of the characters were cut outs of the real thing. There are serious believability problems here.
Russian Dolls’ main interest is in Xavier, who is a sexually addicted bore.
Why should we care for someone as self-absorbed as he is?
There is some nudity, drug taking and a few sex scenes which may offend some viewers.
The title refers to the babushka dolls where one layer gives way to another sometimes similar, sometimes different image.
This film is nowhere near as interesting. Each layer is as unfocused, forced and vacuous as the last one.
