Like its Euro-pop soundtrack, The Russian Dolls has a shimmering, sleek veneer that hides something jaded and melancholy beneath the surface.

It blitzes from Paris to London to St. Petersburg and back again, and yet it’s a movie about a man who has no clue where he’s going. It’s fitting that we meet him sitting on a train careening beneath the English Channel.

Meet Xavier (Romain Duris): Frenchman, late 20s, aspiring novelist who has put that on hold to write sappy but lucrative French teleplays — the kind in which Olivier has an evil twin brother who has been sleeping with Muriel but lying to Claudine. Xavier hates his job, but not the fact that there’s a different woman in his bed every morning.

Five years ago in the art-house hit The Spanish Apartment (L’auberge espagnole), Duris’ likeable jerk of a character was a wide-eyed college student studying in Barcelona and living in a tiny apartment with roommates from all over the world. Like this sequel, Apartment was all about self-discovery and uncertainty, but Dolls is wiser and more cynical as Xavier realizes he’s going nowhere fast with no one — but he’s not entirely torn up about it.

Duris, an excellent and slyly funny actor, plays Xavier as a charming con — a word that describes him well in French and English ­— who is fooling everyone but himself.

Where Dolls connects to its predecessor is in a series of encounters that culminate in one big St. Petersburg wedding, reuniting all the original Apartment characters. Before that, the movie’s plot takes Xavier into the heart of some of the most beautiful cities in Europe, and at more than two hours, it has an expansive, meandering and hugely satisfying novel-like quality.

Ensemble film sequels often just try to recreate the chemistry of the original, but this is Xavier’s film through and through, even when Wendy (Kelly Reilly), one of the old roommates, enters the picture and becomes a part of his caddish existence and only gradually realizes it.

The Russian Dolls is a great film that doesn’t even need the context of its predecessor to be enjoyed, but it is a movie that likely will grow with its viewers over time. Before I stepped on a plane and studied in France for 10 weeks last year, I loved The Spanish Apartment, but seeing it now with the hindsight of my own experiences, it strikes a chord few other movies do. Five years from now, I can imagine watching The Russian Dolls and feeling much the same way.