When it comes to games of the heart, the French are very deft players.  And that’s never been more the case than when Audrey Tautou, that wickedly charming screen gamin, walks into a flower shop and orders a rose for her beloved.  In Laetitia Colombani’s black comedy, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, “a rose is not just a rose is not just a rose” in Gertrude Stein’s apt phrase, but a symbol of some very dark and dirty business of the heart ahead.

“Delicacy” is the first feature film of brothers Stéphane and David Foenkinos.  The film seems to have been made by rather inexperienced directors.  It flows from sentimentality to light comedy to tragedy in a way that is neither credible nor smooth. Its humor and gushiness would have been more appropriate for separate episodes of a longer soap opera than for a single film.