Delicacy

Delicacy features a recently widowed Audrey Tautou attempting to move on with her life and, contrary to the film's title, her efforts at 'seizing the day' don't involve starting a restaurant or bakery. It's just one of the few surprises this conveyor-belt slab of French whimsy has in store; that it hasn't been subtitled in Comic Sans is the other.

Tautou is fast becoming the Kate Hudson of nominally 'arthouse' Gallic fare; with the unique brand of anti-gravitas she lends to each role, she proves in Delicacy's early scenes to be one of the few actresses twee enough to make bereavement seem like the most adorable thing ever.

Following her husband's death, Nathalie (Tautou) devotes herself to work, navigating two rebound possibilities in her slick, handsome boss Charles (Bruno Todeschini) and Markus (François Damiens), a gawky gap-toothed Swedish co-worker she impulsively kisses in a grief-induced daze of which she later has no recollection.

Typical of the film's perfume-commercial cuteness, this spontaneous gesture fills the hulking Markus with a confidence that leads him to strut through the Paris streets, scored to T-Rex's Bang A Gong (Get It On), attracting the aroused gazes of gorgeous women passing by. The rest of the film concerns Nathalie and Markus' sexless courtship, and it's good-natured, sweet, bereft of surprises and completely facile.

Bizarrely lacking in the travelogue value these French trifles usually offer, the action is largely confined to the office, though a scene in which Markus finds romantic courage in an Obama speech on TV (I mean, c'mon) scans as an awkward shout-out to Stateside audiences. Tautou needs a career 180, pronto.

Opens 3 May.