Review: Russian Dolls

The big story in Hollywood this week is the doubt over star power. With the third installment of Mission: Impossible performing unsatisfactorily in its opening weekend, the drawing capability of Tom Cruise is being put into question. Even before the film opened, Entertainment Weekly ran a story about the salaries of actors and actresses that wondered about stars' current worth with concern to audience interest in seeing a movie. Internationally, stars may still be a safe bet, though. In addition to Mission: Impossible III doing far better in foreign markets this week, plenty of recent movies featuring big names, including Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt and Jodie Foster, were better received overseas than here in the U.S.

Therefore it makes sense to me that French filmmaker Cédric Klapisch has made a sequel to L'Auberge Espagnole, his hit comedy from 2002 that featured Romain Duris as a student living in Barcelona with a multi-national group of roommates. Duris, seen last year in The Beat That My Heart Skipped, is now a big star in France, and he's not the only cast member whose fame has risen since the original's release, either. Cécile De France acquired a higher profile thanks to Disney's Around the World in 80 Days and the French horror film High Tension. British actress Kelly Reilly has been in the spotlight lately for her roles in Mrs. Henderson Presents and Pride and Prejudice. Then, of course, there is Audrey Tautou, who helped to draw American moviegoers to L'Auberge espagnole following her success here with Amelie, and who is even more popular today, co-starring this summer in one of the year's biggest blockbusters, The Da Vinci Code.

And yet the sequel, Russian Dolls, only did slightly more than half the business of its predecessor in their native France. The reason is probably that regardless of star power, a faulty script can always hurt a film, and Klapisch just didn't deliver the quality of writing he had with the original. L'Auberge Espagnole is on the surface a simple, light comedy about a young man studying abroad, but also it is an insightful allegory for the new European Union with a humorous commentary on language and culture. Russian Dolls, on the other hand, is just a simple, light comedy about a young man looking for the perfect woman.

Xavier (Duris) is now back in Paris barely making a living as a writer. He floats around from job to job, getting work in magazines, scripting TV-movies and ghost-writing memoirs for other people. His love life is just as fluctuating. His bed is constantly shared with different women, but he continually yearns for someone better than the one he's with. At one point we are shown a bizarre story of what happened between Xavier and Neus (Irene Montalà), the bartender from L'Auberge Espagnole, who at the end of that film promises to visit him in a year.

Xavier remains close with ex-girlfriend Martine (Tautou), who is now a mother, and lesbian pal Isabelle (De France), but it seems he's lost touch with the rest of the gang from Barcelona. One day he runs into William (Kevin Bishop), who fans of the original will remember as the obnoxiously ignorant houseguest. He has grown and matured and is now on his way to St. Petersburg to marry a Russian ballerina (Evguenya Obraztsova), and through him, Xavier is able to reunite with William's sister Wendy (Reilly) in order to collaborate with her on a teleplay for a British/French co-production.

Wendy has also matured a lot, so much in fact that it is hard to believe Xavier recognizes her so easily. Like the actress who plays her, she's transformed from merely cute to gorgeous, and now suddenly he admits to harboring an attraction (apparently there isn't anyone he's not attracted to) all these years. They become romantically involved and the relationship appears to be perfect, except that Xavier continues to lust after other females, including a young model (Lucy Gordon) whose story he's writing.

While it makes sense for the other returning characters to be more grown-up and contrast Xavier's enduring immaturity, they are so significantly different from the previous film that it barely matters to the story that they are the same people. Klapisch could have just as well only reused the role of Xavier and had all the women in his life be completely new, except that he would have been insufficient in both star power and the attraction, if not fulfillment, of familiarity. Most of the time, as a sequel, the film resembles a TV-series reunion special, pandering more to the question of, "where are they now?" than it works as either a continuation or a fresh, necessary, new story to be told.

Eventually the other four roommates from L'Auberge eEspagnole show up for cameos as they all attend William's wedding at the end, which is odd because a) William didn't seem well liked by any of them, b) it has been years since he's seen any of them, and c) he doesn't appear to have any other friends attending. Their appearance therefore becomes an even greater evidence of the film being an excuse to bring the cast all back together for the audience's gratification alone. Thankfully the four minor characters still resemble their old selves and can be used mostly as incidental props.

Klapisch's collaging styles of storytelling and camerawork are additional elements that return for the sequel, and also don't work as effectively. The narrative bounces all over the place and forgets whole subplots along the way, resulting in quite a number of loose ends. Visually, the film's altered camera speeds and other tricks have little purpose other than to keep its look consistent with the original. There is only one sequence that is truly as inspired as anything in L'Auberge Espagnole, a fantasy sequence in which Martine attempts to put her own confusingly scattered love life into the context of a fairy tale in order to explain it to her young son.

Overall Russian Dolls can easily be enjoyed because of the reasons for which it was made. Anyone who loved L'Auberge Espagnole should at least like its sequel as something of a guilty fling. It is like having your significant other dress up as someone else; it isn't cheating, but it feels just a tad bit wrong. The film was obviously made for exploitive reasons, but it isn't really a bad film because of that; it is a bad film because it doesn't have enough respect to give its audience anything more than what they need.