Missing pieces
PUZZLE, drama, rated R, Center for Contemporary Arts, Violet Crown, 3 chiles
Cinematic comfort food doesn’t necessarily have to be bland. Puzzle, the American adaptation (by director Marc Turtletaub and writers Oren Moverman and Polly Mann) of Natalia Smirnoff’s 2009 Argentinian film
Rompecabezas, is assembled with familiar ingredients, but it adds subtle and seductive spices to lift this into tasty territory.
Turtletaub (veteran producer of Little Miss Sunshine) stocks his pot with a wonderful cast led by Kelly Macdonald and Irrfan Khan, actors familiar enough to ring a faint bell but anonymous enough to let their performances, rather than their reputations, define the characters.
Agnes (Macdonald) is a suburban lifer, a mousy, resigned little woman whose life is immured by her home, family, and church. She hasn’t been to nearby New York City in many years. Her husband, Louie (David Denman), is a big burly garage owner. He loves his wife but treats her with the well-meaning, unthinking chauvinism of a man totally unaware of an alternative.
The story opens with Agnes cleaning, cooking, decorating, and preparing for a birthday party. Someone breaks a plate, and she reassembles the pieces to glue together. It is only at the end of the party when she brings out the cake to a ragged chorus of “Happy Birthday” that we realize that the birthday is hers. Among her presents, opened once everyone has gone, are a cellphone and a jigsaw puzzle. Both will change her life.
She turns out to have a savant’s facility for the puzzle, and in reaching out to pursue her new passion, she opens up her world. She takes the train into New York, answering an ad for a puzzle partner, and meets Robert (Khan), a charming, handsome, rich inventor. He’s a player in the world of competitive jigsaw puzzling who has recently lost his partner (and wife), and Agnes is a gift from the gods.
Her blossoming self-confidence opens her up like a flower in stopmotion, and it affects everyone around her. Louie is baffled. Their grown sons (Bubba Weiler and Austin Abrams) are bemused. She concocts lies about her whereabouts when she goes into the city to practice with Robert, and for the longest time, nobody suspects a thing, because she’s that sort of woman.
Where’s it all going? That’s the real puzzle here. It’s not a movie that depends on surprises, which are few, but on the emotional leavening of small shifts and shrewd pinches of recognition. The pieces snap into place, and the picture emerges at the end. — Jonathan Richards