Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Crwthod A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Nuno Filipe The Russian Dolls is obviously a must for anyone who watched and enjoyed The Spanish Apartment. The first film was an exciting mix of a good screenplay, convincing actors and the right proportions of drama and humour. It wasn't simply a picture of one of the most fascinating experiences that the European youth can have, it was a lesson about acceptance, friendship and life choices.In this sequel nothing of this happens: instead, we are confronted with a long and irrelevant romance. The characters are now 5 years older and an unexpected event is going to reunite them, but the reunion isn't actually what supports the plot. So what is it? That's the problem: absolutely nothing. Xavier has a difficult work to accomplish and suddenly realizes that this job is a metaphor of his own life. The substance of the screenplay, however, ends there. It's just a two hour long teenage soap opera, where all the characters are looking for a 'right' person that, for some reason, they can't find.This pseudo-grown up reflexion about love ends up as a boring and uninspired cliché with no deep meaning, an insult to any person who enjoyed The Spanish Apartment and has already surpassed the confusions of his early youth.

Armand adventures. friendship. love/hate/words/choices/questions/meetings/a ballerina.another "L'Auberge espagnole". same Romain Duris. new versions of life lessons. in a single word, another chapter of an old story. not boring, not sensational, not interesting or strange. the image of Europe is more small. the feeling of Xavier are on top. and the result is not bad but the charm of first movie is enough. in this case, ambition to tell a profound tale is too much. complicated options, the life as storm , a nudity scene on street, in night, in desperate run, the mixture of a Russian character, the fight between past and present, all is a fragile huge construction. but the good intentions are almost perfect refuge. so, a nice movie. about friendship, love, choices, a wedding, few drops of feelings.

TxMike (Preface comment: I strongly recommend seeing 'The Spanish Apartment' first, as it is a prelude to this movie.)Before I saw the movie the title brought to mind pretty, young Russian women, perhaps the object of desire of non-Russiam men. But that is far from it. The title is a reference to the atom 'Russian Dolls' where successively smaller dolls are nested inside each other. We only learn this near the end, when the main character, Xavier, compares life and love to Russian Dolls. Each time you encounter one (woman, in his case) you wonder if that is the final one, or is there another waiting for you. In fact, the story is mainly of Xavier's trying to make sense out of life, out of his job as a writer, and trying to figure out who he is supposed to love.The story moves around to three main locations, Paris, London, and Moscow. The cinematography is very interesting, sometimes using a type of time-lapse photography to compress an activity. Romain Duris is very good as the young writer Xavier Rousseau. He gets paired with fellow writer, a Brit named Wendy, to translate a TV script from his French writing into English, and there sometimes appear to be romantic sparks between them. But Xavier always seems to be searching for that next lady, the 'perfect' one. He seems to find it in a beautiful model that he is assigned to help write her story. Audrey Tautou is also good in a minor role as Martine, one of Xavier's former loves.There actually is a Russian story also. Brit Kevin Bishop plays William, who is working as a lighting technician in Russia when he meets up with Natacha (Evguenya Obraztsova, really a Russian ballerina) and falls for her. He eventually goes away, learns Russian, and returns to try to get her to marry him. He succeeds.The movie is comedic, for the most part, but does have the serious theme of finding one's love in life. In one funny scene, Xavier's girlfriend Neus suddenly gets out of bad during the late night hours, naked, and proceeds to go into the street. He follows her, also naked, and this turns into a funny scene with him running after her, catching up with her, and both going back to his place, while a fully-dressed couple walk by them. SPOILERS. In the end, Xavier realizes who he really is, and what life and love are really about, and settles in with Wendy, the writer.

bwp126 In the same way that L'Auberge Espagnole dealt with the difficulties of career, school, and growing up in general, Russian Dolls deals with love and growing older. I think the great thing about both of these movies is that so many people can look at these characters- especially Xavier- and say, "Yes! I'm not the only one going through this stuff then!" During both movies there were certain phrases and quotes that made me stop and say, "Wow! That is dead on!" Like in L'Auberge when Xavier talks about how life seems less complicated for everybody else, more organized. Or the final line in Russian Dolls about the search for that special someone. Great movies, entertaining, but most of all they speak to those of us who are still trying to figure it all out!