Paul Haggis examines his own storytelling methods in Third Person, an ambitious puzzle-movie in which couples in three interlocking stories reveal different facets of a single psyche – namely, the author’s. With segments set in Paris, Rome and New York, this tony contempo romance serves as a Crash course in complex modern relationships, focusing primarily on issues of guilt and trust as they relate to love. Though virtually every twist on this emotional roller coaster feels preordained by its architect, the director leaves certain mysteries for the audience to interpret, making for a more open-ended and mature work all around …
As the character most like Haggis, Liam Neeson plays a Pulitzer-winning novelist struggling to write a sincere, self-conscious work about Love (with a capital ‘L’). Neeson’s Michael is holed up in a Paris hotel working on his manuscript – with his enormously understanding wife (Kim Basinger) left back in the States – when his young lover (Olivia Wilde) arrives. The less said about the new relationship, the better, as the surprises begin from the moment she knocks on his door … In order to understand Love from other perspectives, Haggis provides two other fully fleshed-out dramas in far-removed corners of the world …
Each of the film’s couples is impacted at some point by an outsider, or third person, while at the fundamental level of the text itself, Michael never writes in the first person, but relies on expressions like “he thought this” to self-examine. …
Honesty, sincerity and trust all serve as recurring themes in the film, as does the stated belief that “women have the incredible gift of being able to deny any reality” – and yet, whether a substitute for or tool to understand life, the film springs from a male imagination, a sex equally prone to rationalizing its behavior. Such self-consciousness isn’t lost on Haggis, whose take on the Charlie Kaufman-esque meta-movie forgoes sardonic detachment in favor of the far riskier gambit: sincere emotion.

Peter Debruge, “Variety”, 10 September 2013