Puzzle (2018)
Storyline
Agnes is a woman who has reached her early 40s without ever venturing far from home, family or the tight-knit immigrant community in which she was raised by her widowed father. That begins to change in a quietly dramatic fashion when Agnes receives a jigsaw puzzle as a birthday gift and experiences the heady thrill of not only doing something she enjoys, but being very, very good at it.
Directors
Cast
Trailer
Reviews
91
Turtletaub does have a hard time finding a way to conclude Agnes’ story, but he ends Puzzle on such a delightful note of simplicity, that this near-perfect movie nevertheless stuns.
83
Puzzle toes a tough line, managing to stay relentlessly good-hearted and deeply humane, even as Agnes herself plunges into deeper, more dramatic waters. It’s the kind of mid-life crisis story that so rarely centers on a woman and Macdonald shines in the role, riveting even in the quietest of moments.
80
It’s a testament to Macdonald’s performance (and later, to Khan’s charm) that we share her passion for puzzling.
75
An earnest, clear-cut drama about the struggle for one woman’s liberation from the shackles of domesticity, Puzzle does what it sets out to do remarkably well.
75
Thanks to its most engaging, sympathetic stars, even the over-familiar path it takes lets us find the warmth in the predictable first steps its characters take toward a richer life.
