Delicacy

Audrey Tautou stars as Nathalie, a young woman whose life is shattered when the man she loves is struck by a car and killed. Shattered by the loss, Nathalie, a normally sunny and outgoing person, emotionally collapses and spends the next three years in a fog of desperate mourning stumbling from home to work and back again with virtually no interaction with the world around her. One day, on impulse, she passionately kisses a coworker, not to see what it would feel like kissing this particular man, but more to see if she can feel anything at all. She doesn’t and blocks the moment out of her mind. The guy (François Damiens) has a very different opinion of what happened and starts to woo Nathalie in a heartbreakingly clumsy way. Directed by brothers Stéphane and David Foenkinos, the film avoids the traps that catch most romantic comedies by letting the chemistry between the unlikely pair build over a series of well written scenes. Damiens plays the nerdy Romeo with goofy grace, while Tautou balances fading grief and increasing desire in new and moving ways.