4.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.24.18
Some actors are so accomplished — they slide so wholly into a role, inhabiting even the smallest nuance of personality — that they simply become the character.
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| Robert (Irrfan Khan), accustomed to puzzle partners who focus on distinct colors, can't fathom the more instinctive, pattern-recognition method that Agnes (Kelly Macdonald) prefers. |
Kelly Macdonald is just such a talent. She’d captivate even when doing something humdrum, like grocery shopping. Actually, that’s definitely true, since her character here doesmake an emotional symphony out of grocery shopping. Along with pretty much every other scene in director Marc Turtletaub’s clever, delicately assembled little drama.
The Scottish actress hit my radar with her strong supporting performances in 2001’s Gosford Park, the 2003 British miniseries State of Play and the 2005 British TV movie The Girl in the Café. Came to discover that I’d also seen her acting debut years earlier, in 1996’s Trainspotting. Had to go back and re-watch it. She was marvelous then, as well: right out of the gate.
She’s been quite busy ever since, likely well remembered — on this side of the pond — for her edge-of-the-seat supporting turn in 2007’s No Country for Old Men, and her supporting part in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.
Astonishingly, Puzzle is her first solid starring role. The 22-year wait has been worthwhile: She doesn’t disappoint.
Agnes (Macdonald) is introduced as she meticulously prepares her home for visitors and a birthday party. We immediately sense, from her air of concentration, that every detail needs to be just so. Turtletaub then cuts to the party in progress: people drinking, laughing, having a good time. Being a bit careless, as guests often are.
Agnes is the fastidious, detail-oriented sort who gathers discarded glasses and dishes, and scoops dropped appetizers from the floor, before somebody can step on them.
Not until she brings in the beautifully decorated cake, and the crowd launches into a rendition of “Happy Birthday,” do we realize — as they all reach the third line — that it’s her birthday. And she has done all the work.
Agnes lives in Bridgeport, Conn., with her husband Louie (David Denman) and young adult sons Ziggy (Bubba Weiler) and Gabe (Austin Abrams). The latter is forever accompanied by girlfriend Nicki (Liv Hewson), a mildly aggressive Buddhist vegan who seems attached to Gabe like a third arm.
Agnes is less a wife and mother, more a housemaid, and treated condescendingly by most of the others. It’s important to note, however — and this is obvious both from Polly Mann and Oren Moverman’s script, and from the way Turtletaub shades these early scenes — that there’s nothing mean-spirited about this behavior. Louie and their sons aren’t “bad” people; they merely inhabit what they view as traditional roles.
(Well, that’s not entirely true. Abrams’ Gabe is a spoiled, self-centered little jerk.)
Louie is capable of gruff tenderness, demonstrated more than once. Beyond that, he simply doesn’t know any other way to behave.
Their home feels curiously time-locked: a relic from another era, much like Agnes’ withdrawn subservience. This isn’t accidental; cinematographer Chris Norr added touches from a smoke machine, to suggest that the house has been rooted to this suburban neighborhood forever, unchanged and frozen in time, much like the family that inhabits it.
Louie runs a garage; Agnes handles the books. Money is tight. The goal is to get Gabe into college; Ziggy, lacking his younger brother’s smarts, is stuck helping Louie in the garage. He’s clearly miserable.
Agnes gets two key birthday presents: a Smart phone and a jigsaw puzzle. (That first gift is our indication that this story is, in fact, contemporary.) Initially, the phone — which she regards with disinterested suspicion — is just another excuse for Agnes to be teased, for being stubbornly old-school. She accepts the mocking politely, but we can see that the words sting.
Later, finally left to herself, she opens the other gift and spills the puzzle pieces onto a table. And impulsively completes it. Quickly. Very quickly.
We’ve earlier glimpsed her flair for pattern recognition, as she considered reassembling a broken plate, but immediately perceived that a little shard was missing. But this talent for puzzling is on an entirely different level. Even Agnes is surprised, and pleased: Completing the puzzle is satisfying, cathartic … triumphant.
An ability that has nothing to do with her family.
Thus emboldened, Agnes embarks on what apparently is a rare thing for her: a train trip to New York, and a visit to the shop where the puzzle was purchased, in order to get another one. Or two.
(And goodness, but jigsaw fans will salivate over the dedicated puzzle shop created by production designer Roshelle Berliner. That’s the major allure of big cities: that they can support such niche business models.)
Agnes returns home with fresh puzzles and a phone number, taken from an advert in the store, and left by a “professional” puzzler seeking a partner for an upcoming jigsaw tournament. (Yes, there is such a thing: regional events ultimately leading to the international World Jigsaw Puzzle Federation. Who knew?)
Responding to the ad clearly is outside her comfort zone, but Agnes’ confidence has been kick-started. And she has that new Smart phone.
That’s how she meets Robert (Irrfan Khan), a wealthy, reclusive inventor — and gifted puzzler — who lives in a lavish but soulless home. Robert is burdened by serious baggage, the details of which emerge via Khan’s equally nuanced performance. (He’s likely recognized from recent starring roles in Life of Pi and The Lunchbox.)
Agnes and Robert make an odd, slightly uncomfortable, mildly prickly pair, navigating the rough seas of their nascent relationship with the wariness of damaged souls. But Robert also has a talent for philosophical observations: “Life is random, but when you finish a puzzle, you know you’ve made all the right choices.”
By this point, this story’s focus has become clear: It’s about a 40-something woman finding herself, with the slow delight of a flower opening to a brilliant sun it never knew existed. This transition, as Macdonald conveys it, is transcendent.
She’s in good company, and not merely with Khan. Weiler also delivers an engagingly subtle performance as Ziggy, whom we soon realize doesn’t take his mother for granted, the way his father and brother do. There’s a strong bond between Agnes and Ziggy; she’s probably his best friend. Weiler has a heartbreaking moment, during an intimate exchange between Ziggy and his mother: a confession of inadequacy guaranteed to shatter any devoted parent.
Mann and Moverman’s carefully sculpted script delivers a nifty parallel between these two characters.
Denman deftly navigates an extremely challenging role, as it’s important that Louie not be seen as a one-dimensional chauvinist pig. Denman straddles that razor’s edge: As events proceed, Louie grows increasingly dismayed and bewildered: His world is shifting, and he hasn’t the faintest idea how to change with it.
Dustin O’Halloran’s instrumental score is both sparse and striking, dominated by thoughtful solo piano passages and somber strings: remarkably effective, as an accessory to the drama.
This film actually is a remake of Argentinean writer/director Natalia Smirnoff’s 2009 drama, Rompecabezas, which clearly bears investigating. I’m curious to find out whether Smirnoff’s version ends as ambiguously as Turtletaub’s adaptation, as I suspect many American viewers are apt to be (ahem) puzzled by the final scene.
Even though it makes perfect sense, given that Turtletaub, Mann and Moverman have made all the right choices.
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