In the eleven years since Amélie, the enigmatic Audrey Tautou has starred in an abundance of cute rom-coms, from fast paced musical Not on the Lips to the tacky farce Hors de Prix. This time around she’s grieving the sudden death of her husband as the timid Nathalie Kerr. Fast forward three years and she finds herself at the mercy of her unscrupulous boss and his attempts to woo her; but as her awkward and diffident colleague Markus Lundl (François Damiens) arrives, Nathalie must decide whether to follow her head or her heart.
First time directors (and brothers) Stéphane and David Foenkinos tackle this genre with great haste, and while Delicacy doesn’t offer an insight into emotional recovery and grief all too well, it offers some “delicate” moments of poignancy. Tautou and Damiens are both appealing in seclusion, but together they offer a quirky sort of chemistry, convincing and realistic which holds things together over the, at times, scrambled storytelling. It’s true that Delicacy won’t tax the brain or offer something new to this tired and loved-up genre, but its sincerity holds it above the sickliness of what Hollywood frequently churns out.