Puzzle

Agnes is a housewife in her forties. She looks after her husband, her two sons and the parish; she does nothing of her own. For her birthday she is given a jigsaw and finishes a thousand pieces in one sitting. She realises that is not ordinary. Going into New York for more puzzles, she sees a notice in the shop: someone is looking for a partner for competition. Marc Turtletaub directs. Kelly Macdonald plays Agnes and Irrfan Khan plays her partner Robert. It is a remake of the 2009 Argentine film Rompecabezas. The puzzle here is not a hobby but a language. Agnes has never seen the measure of her own intelligence; discovering that she can place pieces at speed is the answer to a question nobody ever asked about her. The best thing in it is the refusal to make the husband a villain. Louie is not unloving; it simply never occurred to him that Agnes might want something of her own, and that absence is the centre of the story. Irrfan Khan fell ill shortly after this and died in 2020; Puzzle is among his last American films. Turtletaub had been an independent producer for years, and this is one of his first features as a director. Who it is for: viewers who like quiet character drama and stories of finding yourself in middle age. Who it is not for: almost nothing happens, the pace is slow, and the ending is deliberately left open.