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Clarence Tsui

Starring: Audrey Tautou, Francois Damiens, Pio Marmai
Director: David  Foenkinos and Stephane Foenkinos
Category: IIA (French)
Over the past 10 years, Audrey Tautou has done several films to distance herself from the Amelie persona that propelled her to international stardom. 
La Delicatesse, however, isn't one of them. Which is all very well, except that the film offers hardly anything visually reinvigorating to the much visited grieving-widow-on-the-rebound subgenre to which it belongs. 
Whimsical in parts and humdrum in others, David and Stephane Foenkinos' directorial debut is a romantic comedy without enough laughs and a tragedy without enough empathy.
Things do not bode well early on as  the film begins with the now tired trope of a couple play-acting their meet-cute.   
Here, it involves Francois (Pio Marmai) telling himself in a voiceover, no less, that he will approach Nathalie (Tautou, above) only if she orders the right kind of beverage in a cafe. 
The notion of performance then dominates the first part, as Nathalie and her colleague and friend do a small routine in the hallways of the theatre where they work as ushers.  
On her way home, Nathalie and Francois agree to get married, as digitally generated snow and stage-like lighting herald their decision. 
Despite the film being an adaptation of David  Foenkinos' novel, the resulting work is disappointingly flat, as the first-time directors seem undecided about whether they should  emphasise the quirks or the sombreness. And when Nathalie's joy is cut short by Francois' untimely demise - an event that  transforms her into a career-minded woman fearful of committing herself to a relationship again - the coherence of the narrative dissipates, as other characters fleetingly take over the storytelling (again, through voiceovers). 
One of them is Markus (Francois Damiens), a bumbling bear of a man with whom Nathalie slowly develops an odd-couple kinship.  
That this relationship rarely looks convincing or strange enough marks the problem of a premise that could have been fleshed out better by the sibling directors, who seem unsure of their abilities. 
 La Delicatesse opens today



La Delicatesse