'Puzzle' review: Watching two people do jigsaw puzzles is not quite the stuff of high drama

In Marc Turtletaub’s “Puzzle,” Kelly Macdonald plays Agnes, a Connecticut housewife who sneaks into New York City to pursue a passion her traditional husband would never approve of. Boxing? Pole-dancing? Drummer in a punk band? No, Agnes has suddenly discovered a talent for jigsaw puzzles. She’s fast, instinctive, with unorthodox methods but a natural gift. When Agnes meets Robert (Irrfan Khan), a wealthy eccentric who lost his puzzle partner when his wife divorced him, they form a potential championship team — and perhaps something more.

What ballet was to “Billy Elliot,” what roller derby was to “Whip It,” so picture puzzles are to this movie — the calling that cannot be ignored. Granted, speedily sorting through edge-pieces isn’t inherently cinematic, but in this genre the activity is less important than the characters. We’re not here for the satisfying “thup” of the 500th piece — we want drama, catharsis and triumph.

There’s almost none of that, though, in “Puzzle,” written by Oren Moverman (“The Messenger”) with Polly Mann and based on an Argentine film called “Rompecabezas.” Our hearts go out only slightly to Agnes, whose husband, Louie (David Denman), is a fairly boring bloke but also a loving family man. (Bubba Weiler and Austin Abrams are appealing as their post-adolescent sons, Ziggy and Gabe.) Meanwhile, Khan (“Life of Pi”) is dependably enchanting as Robert, a kind of Ravensburger mystic who waxes eloquent about puzzles and life, but his lines are often plainly ridiculous. “The aesthetic results please you,” he says of Agnes’ puzzle passion. “It turns you on.”

That kind of quasi-profundity threatens to push “Puzzle” into self-parody. (It’s not hard to imagine Will Ferrell as, say, a word-search prodigy whose disapproving father lost his wife in a freak sudoku accident). In “Puzzle,” Agnes manages to disappoint pretty much everyone, including herself — a weird U-turn of an ending in a movie that has been trying to strike an inspirational tone throughout.

The moral of this story? Unclear, but maybe Robert says it best: “Life’s just random.”