Piecing together a life in ‘Puzzle’
Like a bedtime cup of cocoa, Marc Turtletaub’s “Puzzle” has a soothing familiarity that quiets the mind and settles the spirit. It might also make you a little bit sleepy — which, in a multiplex reverberating with action-movie agita, can be an excellent effect for a movie to have.
Which is not to say that this low-key, high-stakes domestic drama is boring — not at all. But it does have a narrative and performative rhythm that’s cozycomforting. It starts with the music, a tinkling, lonely-soul piano refrain that hovers around Agnes (Kelly Macdonald), a blue-collar housewife in her early 40s with a loving husband, Louie (David Denman), and two grown sons, Ziggy and Gabe (Bubba Weiler and Austin Abrams).
We meet her fussing around their Connecticut home, tending to guests as a birthday party winds down. The party is hers, yet she seems disengaged from the festivities, her smile forced and a little sad. Then she finds a jigsaw puzzle among her presents — a map of the world, wouldn’t you know — and completes it so quickly that she immediately wants to try another. For this timid homebody, assembling the pieces is a transformative act, the visual suggestion of a world of possibilities and a reminder of forgotten talents. First, though, she must brave the train ride to New York City, where puzzles galore and second chances await.
Adapted from Natalia Smirnoff’s 2009 Argentine film of the same title, Oren Moverman and Polly Mann’s screenplay is gently sincere, seeing no humor in Agnes’ midlife disquiet and countrymouse artlessness. No marital meanness or dramatic blowups disturb the calm of a plot that keeps its discreetly roiling emotions on the inside. Ms. Macdonald gives a lovely uncertainty to her character’s gradual empowerment, but Agnes is so battened down that it’s hard to get a lock on her (a trait she shares with Ziggy, whose similar unhappiness and intuitive connection to his mother make for the movie’s most touching subplot).
As it happens, the only thing that screams in this film is metaphor, with symbolism whimpering on the sidelines. So when Agnes is introduced to the world of competitive puzzling by Robert (the marvelous Irrfan Khan), a wealthy Indian inventor, his rumpled cosmopolitan glamour and dark-eyed wisdom seem the stuff of fairy tales. Gazing at him as if he were some exotic beast, the ashes of Lent fresh on her forehead, Agnes crosses his threshold and into a new life. It might not be the one she expects.