OxfordPress.com

A dazzling diversion with dark undertones, the movie is he said/she said taken to the extreme. We watch certain events from one point of view, then from another. Conflicting stories are to be expected, but not as contradictory as the ones writer-director Laetitia Colombani unfolds.

The movie begins with a sprightly young art student named Angelique (Tautou) dropping into a flower shop to buy a single rose for her beloved, a handsome but older cardiologist named Loic (Samuel Le Bihan). Flashing a smile that could persuade Saddam Hussein to give himself up, she gets the shop's owner to have the flower delivered, even though one-stem deliveries aren't his usual practice. Next we see Loic sniffing the rose, obviously touched by the gesture.

Slowly we learn that all is not as it seems in this relationship. Loic is married, with a pregnant wife. Angelique doesn't care. She blissfully insists to her friends that he plans to leave her so they can be together. And from what little bits we see of their relationship, it could be true.

We also get hints that Angelique's unwavering adoration can border on the obsessive. For instance, when she sees Loic walking with his wife, she angrily spray-paints a message on his car's windshield. But it's nothing to get too worried about; she is, after all, very young and very much in love and very used to getting her way, as we saw in the flower shop.

Then, about 40 or so minutes in, the movie rewinds and we're back at the flower shop. This time, it's Loic's version. And love, as they say, truly is in the eye of the beholder.

Colombani, making her feature debut, has made a blithely devious film. But she also plays fair (sort of). The opening of Angelique's version is all hearts and flowers -- bouquets of roses and enchanting heart-shaped balloons, paperweights, etc. Even the music is purposely cloying -- woodwinds and tinkling triangles, like something from a Doris Day romantic comedy. Loic's version also starts with hearts, only these are medical drawings, X-rays, actual organs, etc. These two are clearly not in the same movie . . . even though, they are.

Tautou does an expert job of warping her wide-eyed "Amélie" image. Yet she does it so subtly that you're well into the picture before you notice the sparkle in those beguiling doe eyes is kind of a laserlike gleam. As creepy as it is frothy, "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not" toys with our notions of romantic fantasy and puppy love and enchanting young women. Here, it says, are the darker uses of enchantment.