Susan Granger’s review of “Puzzle” (Sony Pictures Classics)
Somewhere in middle-class suburbia, mousy Agnes (Kelly Macdonald) is a shy, dutiful housewife, setting up for her own birthday party. She vacuums, hangs decorations, bakes a cake and cleans up when the guests finally leave the modest home she inherited from her Hungarian immigrant father.
Agnes’s domestic life revolves the Catholic Church and caring for her garage-mechanic husband Louie (David Denman) and teenage sons: Ziggy (Bubba Weiler) and Gabe (Austin Abrams). When they give her an iPhone, she eyes it skeptically, murmuring: “I guess I can use it for emergencies.”
She’s far more intrigued by another gift: an intricate, 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, which she finishes in one afternoon. After dismantling and completing it several times, she takes a Metro North train to Grand Central, making her way to lower Manhattan to find a store specializing in complicated, challenging puzzles.
At the cash register, she spies a ‘Partner Wanted’ sign. Hesitant at first, Agnes texts the listed number, reaching Robert (Irrfan Khan), a reclusive inventor whose patent (something involving magnets) allows him to live comfortably and enter puzzle competitions.
When they get together, something within repressed Agnes clicks. She discovers that she’s far more talented at assembling puzzle pieces than she ever dreamed. That’s the beginning of her rising confidence and independence.
Guilty about deceiving her husband, Agnes, nevertheless, continues to trek into the city two days a week to practice with Robert, preparing for a nationwide contest. Eventually, of course, clueless Louie finds out where she goes and what she’s doing – which precipitates a marital, mid-life crisis.
Adapted from Natalia Smirnoff’s Argentinian film “Rompecabezas,” it’s subtly scripted as a character study by Oren Moverman and Polly Mann and sensitively directed by 71 year-old Marc Turtletaub, best known for producing “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Safety Not Guaranteed.”
Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald (“Trainspotting,” TV’s “Boardwalk Empire”) shines in her first starring role, immeasurably aided by Bollywood’s Irrfan Khan (“The Lunchbox,” “Life of Pi”).
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Puzzle” is a compassionate 7, aimed at an adult audience.
