La Délicatesse (David & Stéphane Foenkinos, 2011)

David Foenkinos adapts his best-selling novel, Delicacy, with Audrey Tautou as a woman prematurely widowed who immerses herself in her work in order to cope with her loss until finding romance again with a Swedish co-worker. The character is equal parts Tautou's cute gamines and damaged but determined individuals and the film overall is likewise a melange of drama and romantic comedy, but this time the two elements have failed to blend. Scenes in both modes work in isolation, but too many leaps and elisions create a disjointed effect and as a result the characters, Tautou's in particular, tend to act impulsively without sufficient underlying psychological reasons having been laid out for their actions. Thus the eventual new-found romance ends up flat and unconvincing. The conclusion cannot be escaped here that novelists, used to relying on the structural shortcuts and internal monologues of their art form to create emotional and narrative coherence, are not necessarily the best people to convert their stories into the medium of cinema when other means are required to achieve the same effect.

5/10