The director has said that this faintly twee, Paris-set romantic fantasy-comedy is inspired by the spirit of Woody Allen. It is actually slightly more comparable to Anthony Minghella’s Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990). Stéphane Guillon plays Paul, a bleary, rumpled writer, unhappily blocked since the death of his wife, who now makes a (highly unlikely) living writing funeral orations for grieving people. One day, he is approached by Emma, played by Julie Gayet: her late husband, Nathan, was a magazine photographer who died and was buried abroad on assignment; now she needs Paul to write an oration for her, so that she and her eight-year-old son can get closure. Paul is so strangely affected by the situation that it unlocks some of his own frozen emotion, and what he gets down on paper causes weird karmic reactions in the cosmos. There is some poignancy here, but also something cloyingly contrived; the setting Vincent Lannoo creates has a quirky romcom unreality that makes the flourish of fantasy simply a second level of implausibility. It is papery and insubstantial.
