Pleasantly and persistently confusing

Rating: 8/10 (9 June 2015)

I was never quite sure if this story within a story was meant to be a comedy or a tragedy, French or German, modern or period. It was delightfully puzzling, and I was generally excited to see what was going to happen next.
It made the film artistic and cutting-edge, but also a little bit confusing. There was a great number of characters, locations, and plots to keep track of, all moving along at the fastest speed imaginable for a film.
To actually follow the entire story required my fullest attention and focus. While that wasn't difficult for a movie that mostly kept me entertained; the flurry of cuts and transitions, narrated by several characters in both modern and period settings would've easily lost me at any given junction.
It's artistic nature and rather... unique sense of humour made it enjoyable, to be sure, but it's the kind of movie you watch for the sake of having watched it. It reminded me of comical classics like 'Rat Race' and 'What's Up, Doc?'; but without the laid-back easy-to-watch nature.
It's like someone took a classic comedy, filled it to its brim with characters on either side - without telling you who's a good guy and who isn't, and then cut it together like Inception; deliberately leaving the audience in the dark the whole time.
It's funny, and delightful, and the protagonists are easy to love; but you would almost certainly need to watch it twice to take in the bombardment of story.