Melting pot

Casse-tête chinois (Chinese puzzle)

Crit

It's those wacky kids from L'Auberge espagnole and Les Poupées russes (Russian dolls) again, and now they're all kind of grown up and living in or visiting New York and they have the problems grown-ups have--raising children after divorce, balancing the spark of infidelity against the warmth of commitment, confronting the existential conundrum of 11th Street intersecting with West 4th Street--but they remain the same people we had deeply mixed feelings about before (the opening credits show a triptych of stills of each principal).

It's a likable film, if not a particularly credible one--and really, did we need a French bedroom farce scene? These folk may not repay our enduring attention as well as Jesse and Céline, but hey, they're mostly French and they're all beautiful, so you make allowances.