(Preface comment: I strongly recommend seeing 'The Spanish Apartment' first, as it is a prelude to this movie.)
Before I saw the movie the title brought to mind pretty, young Russian women, perhaps the object of desire of non-Russiam men. But that is far from it. The title is a reference to the atom 'Russian Dolls' where successively smaller dolls are nested inside each other. We only learn this near the end, when the main character, Xavier, compares life and love to Russian Dolls. Each time you encounter one (woman, in his case) you wonder if that is the final one, or is there another waiting for you. In fact, the story is mainly of Xavier's trying to make sense out of life, out of his job as a writer, and trying to figure out who he is supposed to love.
The story moves around to three main locations, Paris, London, and Moscow. The cinematography is very interesting, sometimes using a type of time-lapse photography to compress an activity. Romain Duris is very good as the young writer Xavier Rousseau. He gets paired with fellow writer, a Brit named Wendy, to translate a TV script from his French writing into English, and there sometimes appear to be romantic sparks between them. But Xavier always seems to be searching for that next lady, the 'perfect' one. He seems to find it in a beautiful model that he is assigned to help write her story. Audrey Tautou is also good in a minor role as Martine, one of Xavier's former loves.
There actually is a Russian story also. Brit Kevin Bishop plays William, who is working as a lighting technician in Russia when he meets up with Natacha (Evguenya Obraztsova, really a Russian ballerina) and falls for her. He eventually goes away, learns Russian, and returns to try to get her to marry him. He succeeds.
The movie is comedic, for the most part, but does have the serious theme of finding one's love in life. In one funny scene, Xavier's girlfriend Neus suddenly gets out of bad during the late night hours, naked, and proceeds to go into the street. He follows her, also naked, and this turns into a funny scene with him running after her, catching up with her, and both going back to his place, while a fully-dressed couple walk by them.
SPOILERS. In the end, Xavier realizes who he really is, and what life and love are really about, and settles in with Wendy, the writer.
Before I saw the movie the title brought to mind pretty, young Russian women, perhaps the object of desire of non-Russiam men. But that is far from it. The title is a reference to the atom 'Russian Dolls' where successively smaller dolls are nested inside each other. We only learn this near the end, when the main character, Xavier, compares life and love to Russian Dolls. Each time you encounter one (woman, in his case) you wonder if that is the final one, or is there another waiting for you. In fact, the story is mainly of Xavier's trying to make sense out of life, out of his job as a writer, and trying to figure out who he is supposed to love.
The story moves around to three main locations, Paris, London, and Moscow. The cinematography is very interesting, sometimes using a type of time-lapse photography to compress an activity. Romain Duris is very good as the young writer Xavier Rousseau. He gets paired with fellow writer, a Brit named Wendy, to translate a TV script from his French writing into English, and there sometimes appear to be romantic sparks between them. But Xavier always seems to be searching for that next lady, the 'perfect' one. He seems to find it in a beautiful model that he is assigned to help write her story. Audrey Tautou is also good in a minor role as Martine, one of Xavier's former loves.
There actually is a Russian story also. Brit Kevin Bishop plays William, who is working as a lighting technician in Russia when he meets up with Natacha (Evguenya Obraztsova, really a Russian ballerina) and falls for her. He eventually goes away, learns Russian, and returns to try to get her to marry him. He succeeds.
The movie is comedic, for the most part, but does have the serious theme of finding one's love in life. In one funny scene, Xavier's girlfriend Neus suddenly gets out of bad during the late night hours, naked, and proceeds to go into the street. He follows her, also naked, and this turns into a funny scene with him running after her, catching up with her, and both going back to his place, while a fully-dressed couple walk by them.
SPOILERS. In the end, Xavier realizes who he really is, and what life and love are really about, and settles in with Wendy, the writer.