Russian Dolls

Five years after the shared summer in Barcelona, Xavier and the friends from that apartment reunite. Now around thirty, Xavier has become a writer, though his career has not taken off the way he hoped. He pays the bills writing scripts for television dramas and fends off pressure from his bank, while his love life amounts to a string of brief affairs rather than anything lasting. Martine, once his girlfriend and now a single mother, leans on him for help with her child, and his former flatmate Isabelle keeps reminding him that his expectations of women are unrealistic. Work sends him to London and then to Saint Petersburg, and those journeys push him to sort out his professional and romantic life.

Cédric Klapisch directs and wrote the screenplay, continuing the story he began with The Spanish Apartment three years earlier; the same characters return in Chinese Puzzle eight years later. Romain Duris again plays Xavier, with Kelly Reilly, Audrey Tautou, Cécile de France and Kevin Bishop returning as the circle of friends.

The film cost about 13 million dollars and took roughly 24 million worldwide, a modest return. On IMDb it holds 5.1 from 34 votes, while on TMDB it has 6.6 from 750 votes; a critics' rating of 6.6 from 47 reviews places it close to the audience score on TMDB. The count of credited cast and crew, 56 and 122, reflects a sizeable production.