Kelly Macdonald gives winning performance in tenderhearted 'Puzzle'
“Puzzle” - ★ ★ ★
Since making her big-screen debut 20-odd years ago in “Trainspotting,” the Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald has made a specialty of stealing movies in supporting roles.
She was devastating as the trusting wife in “No Country for Old Men” and perfectly cast as the stoic domestic goddess Dolly in Joe Wright's dreamy adaptation of “Anna Karenina.”
In “Puzzle,” Macdonald has finally found a movie that she doesn't need to steal, because it belongs to her completely. As Agnes, a Connecticut homemaker longing to break out of a comfortable but humdrum existence, Macdonald brings her characteristic quiet radiance to bear on creating a character who's either on the brink of crisis or of rebirth, depending on how she makes the pieces fit.
We meet Agnes in a magnificent opening sequence, as she silently vacuums her house, prepares for a party, hangs a “Happy Birthday” banner and greets guests. The sequence delivers two major reveals that take the audience unaware but speak volumes about Agnes: in many ways, she's a creature stuck in time, and her Catholic conscience has taken self-abnegation to a potentially tragic extreme.
“Puzzle” is based on a 2010 Argentine film in which another thwarted wife and mother discovers a latent talent for putting together jigsaw puzzles. As in that film, Agnes winds up joining forces with an idiosyncratic man to enter a tournament.
But director Marc Turtletaub, working from a script by Polly Mann and Oren Moverman, engages in another clever misdirect. Rather than a conventional underdogs-in-competition drama, “Puzzle” underplays the familiar tropes of stopwatches and we-can-do-this speeches. Instead, Turtletaub and Macdonald create a delicate, affecting portrait of a woman finally expressing long-repressed dissatisfaction and desire.
Although “Puzzle” wholly belongs to Macdonald - who fills each scene with watchful attention and sly humor - it owes much to the actors who play the men in Agnes's life: Her husband, Louie, a mechanic steeped in the traditions of their Hungarian-American community, could easily be portrayed as a sexist oaf. But David Denman imbues him with undeniable sweetness. This is an imperfect marriage, but a fundamentally loving one.
For his part, Irrfan Khan has seductive fun as Agnes' puzzle partner. (Turtletaub has done a similarly astute job of casting Agnes' young-adult sons, played to perfection by Austin Abrams and Bubba Weiler.)
It's not fair to oversell “Puzzle.” It's a modest movie in which not much happens, aside from a woman transforming in small but seismic ways. For fans of Macdonald who have long awaited the movie she owns from start to finish, it's nothing less than a simple, tenderhearted triumph.
<b>Starring:</b> Kelly Macdonald, Irrfan Khan, David Denman
<b>Directed by:</b> Marc Turtletaub
<b>Other:</b> A Sony Pictures Classics release. In limited release. Rated R for language. 102 minutes