Gentille 2005

The always watchable Emmanuelle Devos stars in this quietly crazy love story. She is the memorably named Fontaine Leglou, a woman in her 30s panicked by her handsome, live-in boyfriend Michel’s persistent proposals of marriage. He’s a hot-shot Arctic palaeontologist, she’s an anaesthetist. (This pairing of unlikely professions is presented as entirely feasible in true screwball style.) Their enchantment seems to be mutual, but she worries that such domestic cosiness may be just a matter of habit. At this decisive moment in her life every chance encounter outside the nest suggests an alternative possibility she maybe ought to explore. Strangers seem to mistake her for an old friend or to follow her in the street. Her off-kilter world is peopled with characters, not least Michel’s parents, who behave and interrelate in most peculiar ways – and often with a delightful gift of the gab: there is much fun with wordplay. This is a daffy, sophisticated burlesque of a very Parisian kind made all the more captivating by its gentle apprehensions of genuine mental derangement.