This odd little trifle of a film mixes a modern French story of love in our accelerated age with the modes of a musical. The story is intercut throughout by a bevy of winning pop songs, sung admirably by the cast of the film.

The songs map out the inner turmoil of the main characters and their knotty romantic relationships. As the film opens, Ismael – a clownish character played by Louis Garrel – has himself involved in a tenuous threesome with Alice and Julie (Clotilde Hesme and Ludivine Sagnier, respectively). The bonds of this relationship are completely severed when Julie unexpectedly passes away after a night out. Her death sends the characters adrift, questioning their own feelings towards one another and, in the case of Ismael, his own sexuality.

The layers of this strangely sweet movie run much deeper than the storyline would belie, questioning the ever-morphing character of our sexual natures and our emotions. And director Christophe Honore helps the medicine go down with these delectable spoonfuls of French pop written by a half-dozen of the best songwriters working in that country today. The balance that they help strike with the film's tougher philosophical messages is both a blessing and a curse. I would like to think that modern filmgoers could handle some rather discomforting questions about themselves without a musical candy coating.

Regardless, it is a winning film and a fine injection of youthful energy into the sometimes old guard obsessed world of French cinema.