Director: Cédric Klapish
Genre: Drama/Romance/Comedy
Year: 2005
Few are the films that match or improve on the first installment. By nature, it would seem, sequels are destined to suck, with a few notable exceptions. Oftentimes the trap is to use the formula for the original film, change a few aspects here and there, add more drama and call it a sequel. The problem with that – one of them anyway – is that nobody wants to see the same thing twice with the names and faces changed.
The Spanish Apartment is the original film (click here for review) and for all intents and purposes a twenty-something’s film about entering adulthood and finding your path in life among a myriad of foreigners. The sequel does not take us back to the apartment, but does use a number of the same actors returning to the same role but nearly a decade later. People have moved on with their life and are trying to make something of themselves, balancing their own issues and troubles in life and trying to find gratification in the process.
Xavier (Romain Duris; Dans Paris, L’auberge Espagnole), who gave up on the chase for a job in economics, opted instead to go ahead as a writer. His success, however, is heavily tainted by the fact that his “L’auberge Espagnole” novel has not yet been published and all the work he seems to find at the moment is ghostwriting and pleasing the execs with cliche screenplays for made for TV movies. Everybody in his life, it would seem, is willing to remind him that he is being half-ass about things. His housing situation is also seen better days, something which lands him rooming with Isabelle (Cécile De France; Un Secret) who like Xavi, is having relationship problems. It would seem, Xavier is long overdue to try to bring some order to his life, wooing new flames, dealing with old ones, (namely Martine – Audrey Tautou; Amélie, Dirty Pretty Things) and uncertain ones in the form of Wendy (Kelly Reilly; The Libertine, Pride & Prejudice), a former room mate at the Spanish apartment, who is now also a writer and facing her own turbulence in life.
So, take the fractured lives of these people and bring them all to culmination at the unexpected wedding of William (Kevin Bishop), Wendy’s younger brother to a Russian ballerina, to which they are all invited, bringing together once again the entire group of former friends, along with all their baggage.
If the first movie was a film made for twenty-somethings, this film is most definitely aimed at the thirty-something crowd and it hits the mark with fabulous results, both comic, touching and frustrating. It would seem the writer has grown up along with his characters and payed closed attention to the tribulations that life seems to bring when the responsibility level is kicked up a notch.
It helps that the characters are no longer new, we have their background, we know their story, we already relate to them, so that in this film we can simply hit the ground running and as a result we get something that is more complicated than the first, contextually and literally. Take the editing, for example, which was often broken up in the first but elevated on this second installment and curiously the title of the film is applied not only to its theme, but also to the way the story is put together, making for a thoroughly enjoyable puzzle that is a thrill to see put together at the end.
Stringing together ‘yay’ moments and ‘hell no!’ moments and ‘wtf’ moments along with a clever script and witty dialogue, Russian Dolls is a fulfilling flick that will have you laughing, frowning and cheering in turns as you see these characters develop very much in realistic fashion.
Rating: 
Comments: Brief nudity, some language in multiple foreign languages and subtitled into English. Some brief sexual content, adult situations and drug usage. I also must say, it is crazy how much hair makes a difference in a girl, Wendy looks a lot hotter in this film thanks to her hair. Isabelle looks unfortunately less so, also due to her hair.
Quote: Xavier: What’s all this shit about love? How do we get so nuts? The time we waste! When you’re alone, you cry, “Will I find her?” When you’re not- “Does she love me as much as I love her?” “Can we love more than one person in a lifetime?” Why do we split up? All these fucking questions! You can’t say we’re uninformed. We read love stories, fairy tales, novels. We watch movies. Love, love, love…!
Isabelle: You could just call her back
