In 'The Names of Love,' French plays cute

Frothy and French is not precisely how one would describe "The Names of Love," which spends 40 or so minutes beating around the bush before getting to its point: That the comely Baya (Sara Forestier), a young woman of Algerian and lefty French descent, sleeps with conservatives to cure them of their political "ailment." And to a large extent, it works. But when she meets Arthur Martin (Jacques Gamblin), a starched liberal and a child of a Jewish survivor, things get complicated. Together they represent troubled 20th century France (she the Algerian war, he the Holocaust). Less cosmically, they also have trouble getting their romantic act together.

What the viewer expects is lighthearted comedy: Both principals narrate their stories, as their family histories play out whimsically behind them. Baya is as loony and liberated as Arthur is uptight; their odd-couple dynamic is ripe with comic potential. But director Michel Leclerc never attains mirth, as much as he does a poignancy about racial and cultural identity, Arab-Jewish relations, victimhood, immigration and Frenchness. Had he come at these issues head-on, of course, "The Names of Love" would be a ham-handed exercise. As it is, we are seduced into a sense of universal brotherhood.

Forestier is a charmingly awkward actress, and she and Gamblin play well off each other, their worldviews, both political and sexual, coming into constant conflict. Arthur's family is uptight and never talks about its tragic past; Baya's family will talk about anything. Their search for common ground, and Arthur's revelation about the Holocaust, provides Baya with one of the more audacious comic lines in recent memory ("Auschwitz? That's fantastic!"). You'll wish the rest of the movie was as out-of-control.

In French with English subtitles