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Of the two, the house is easier to fix, so he hires Laura (Emilie Dequenne), a twentysomething whose idea of dressed-for-success interview attire is a microskirt and tank top. She may dress like a tart, but she's there to work. When Jacques makes a condescending remark about her two-tone hair, she responds with a shrug, "I don't clean with my hair."

Their arrangement becomes complicated when Laura's ex-boyfriend kicks her out. She asks her employer if she can stay with him until she finds another place. So she moves in -- at which time she remembers to ask him what his first name is.

However, there's more to "The Housekeeper" than just another salacious May-December fling. Director Claude Berri, whose credits include the splendid mid-'80s duo "Jean de Florette" and "Manon of the Spring," isn't interested in the same old story of the besotted older man in the midst of a midlife crisis and in the thrall of a babelicious much younger woman. Jacques remains remarkably levelheaded, cautioning Laura that desire isn't the same as love. Yet for her, it is. At her age, everything is a matter of impulse, of what feels good.

There's little calculated or needy about her pursuit of Jacques. Rather, it's a matter-of-fact solution to something she doesn't like -- being alone. For Jacques, however, loneliness is a more complex issue, not solved by the mere presence of someone in his bed.

"The Housekeeper" turns out to be an acutely observed (and felt) essay on loneliness. Especially the middle-aged-male variety, which is less easily solved than the proliferation of older man/younger woman relationships would suggest. The film's final line -- and Jacques' reaction -- is heartbreaking.

Berri shows us the loneliness inside Jacques' head -- the way he notices the nice-looking woman by herself on the metro or his quick glance at a row of on-their-own men at a jazz concert. Unlike the Beatles' song "Eleanor Rigby," Jacques doesn't care where all the lonely people come from; he just doesn't want to be one of them. Neither does his best friend, Claire, a recent divorcée who fills the emptiness with a bottle or six of wine -- the same sort of Band-Aid effect Laura initially supplies for Jacques.

Yet the movie isn't a downer. Rather, it has an offbeat poignancy mixed with a sly sense of humor. For instance, Jacques' lonely-guy pal Ralph lives in a resort town with dozens of chickens, which he paints and then eats. Clearly, Laura is a saner solution than that.

Berri does something we rarely see done by Hollywood: He sexualizes Laura without leering at her. And he sketches out her limited cultural parameters -- techno-pop and game shows -- without condescending to her.

"The Housekeeper" turns a clichéd male fantasy into an unusual study of the inexplicable joy of togetherness. Being connected with someone is a malleable concept for Laura, something to be tried on and discarded as easily as a new outfit. Jacques and his contemporaries see it as something momentous, an out-of-left-field miracle with questionable staying power. Life would be a lot smoother -- on the surface, at least -- for all of us Jacques and Claires if only we didn't know now what we didn't know then.