The director lived in New York while studying at New York University, and now he returns with his colorful take, including using Chinatown as one of his settings. Romain Duris as the writer Xavier finds his life in upheaval. His British wife Wendy (the attractive Kelly Reilly) decides to leave him after she falls for a wealthy guy (Peter Hermann) who lives in New York. Xavier is distraught when he learns she is taking their children with her, and the film has a touching scene in which he says goodbye to his young son, who fears that his father doesn’t love him when, to put the boy at ease, Xavier tries to assure him life will be great in New York.

The action picks up further when Xavier decides to move to New York to be near the children. His life has become complicated, partly as a result of deciding to help his lesbian pal Isabelle (Cécile de France) and her mate Ju (Sandine Holt) have a child by virtue of his donating his sperm to impregnate Isabelle. Klapisch, his sense of humor ever in play, has an extremely funny scene of Xavier in a bathroom trying to ejaculate while stimulated by the sexy pictures in a magazine given him. The women in the magazine spring off the page to life to become more tantalizing.

Isabelle says he can stay with her and Ju in their Brooklyn apartment, but this is hardly a satisfactory arrangement, and he is generously installed in a Chinatown apartment that Ju owns. Xavier’s adventures are just beginning. How can he become a working resident in New York with a green card that he needs? The possibility pops up when he aids a Chinese cab driver beaten in a New York road rage hassle by driving him in the cab to a hospital. There, he meets the man’s family—and also a young Chinese woman willing to enter into a marriage of convenience to help him become legal.

There are funny scenes involving a suspicious immigration inspector (Peter McRobbins), who poses questions to test the marriage while the couple dissembles. A surprise check-up visit to Xavier’s abode presents a crisis. Meanwhile, Xavier has been getting legal advice from a loud, aggressive low-scale lawyer in a bustling office tailored to help immigrants.

The film is ripe with humorous scenes. When Xavier visits a posh Central Park South apartment to see his children, he encounters Wendy’s new guy, who is tall, handsome and friendly, but there is little they can say to each other in view of their polarized lives and the awkwardness of the situation . Xavier is furious to find when his children arrive that they are wearing uniforms, the required dress of their private school, one source of the arguments that develop with Wendy.

Xavier’s life gets more complicated when his former flame Martine, played by the lovely Audrey Tautou, turns up in New York. He puts her up in his apartment and, of course, they sleep together, which stirs old feelings. How far will the spark lead them now?

I especially enjoyed one situation. Films have often had the cliché of a husband fooling around with a babysitter. In this one, lesbian mother Isabelle takes to an affair with her babysitter.

Kalpisch never loses sight of the sensitive sides to the New York adventures. Xavier has a meeting with his estranged father without much of a connection being resumed. Xavier’s young son learns a bit of what’s going on around him by his keen observations and listening to the adults. Xavier pursues the novel he is writing, which is really a framework for telling his own story as revealed in the plot of the film.

The director is often inventive, at one point using a burst of animation. Also, when Xavier is desperately in need of advice, suddenly philosophers Schopenhauer ad Hegel turn up at his side (shades of Woody Allen). There are the transatlantic conversations via Skype with his French publisher, who thinks a novel will work better without a happy ending.