Cédric Klapisch's Casse-tête chinois | Chinese Puzzle (2013)

So, the third part of Cédric Klapisch's film trilogy, following on from L'Auberge espagnole and Les Poupées russes, with Xavier (Romain Duris) once more in the lead role, with the faithfuls Wendy (Kelly Reilly), Martine (Audrey Tautou), Isabelle (Cécile de France), but this time based in New York. Again, Xavier is in a mess (but much more unbelievable this time) but he's helped out by, er, Hegel and Schopenhauer.

Isabelle has moved to Brooklyn, where she lives with girlfriend Ju (Sandrine Holt), and Wendy is leaving Xavier (with their two children) for the American John (Peter Hermann), one of the reasons for the separation surely being that Xavier has agreed to trying (by artificial insemination) to get Isabelle pregnant so that she and Nancy can have a child. The almost penniless Xavier (who is nevertheless now a published novelist) decides that he must leave for New York too as he wants to be closer to his children. One of the more subtle jokes is that Xavier initially stays with Isabelle and Ju, although he's looking for a flat; Nancy asks where, and Xavier says he wants to be near to his children, and Wendy lives on 6th avenue near the main entrance to Central Park: he doesn't have a clue why Isabelle has a strange look, but he'll no doubt find out, and anyway Ju finds him a crummy place in Chinatown.

At less than two hours this movie moves really fast, also pulling in Xavier playing hero to an ever-grateful Chinese cab driver who rigs it up for him to marry Nancy (Li Jun Li); two visits from Martine from France; Xavier's father trying to find a symbol of his wife's and Xavier's mother's love in a paving stone; immigration officials questioning Xavier and Nancy not unlike Georges Fauré (Gérard Depardieu) in Peter Weir's Green Card (1990), and pursuing Xavier and Nancy to his flat when Isabelle and a young female baby sitter are having sex: the escape of the two naked women onto the roof recalls the naked Xavier chasing a naked girlfriend in Les Poupées russes; and so on.

In the end Martine agrees to move from Paris and live with Xavier in New York. Yes, with her two kids in a crummy flat with no fear of immigration officials returning? Pure fantasy, as the computer graphics have suggested, but an adorable film.