Look who's stalking in 'Wild Grass'

A French braid of romance, obsession and perversity - or are they all the same thing? - "Wild Grass" is the latest from Alain Resnais, one of the grand old men of the Nouvelle Vague ("Night and Fog," "Last Year at Marienbad"), and a director whose fluency in film craft make this fractured fairy tale sing.

And it is a fairy tale - told largely through narration, and in the first person of the various characters, it suggests the classic tales of childhood by unearthing buried phobias and Freudian fears. But the strategy also lightens things up considerably, to the point that what might have been a paranoid Parisian thriller is more like a frothy Gallic comedy.

One with an edge, of course: Marguerite (Sabine Azema), dentist and shoe enthusiast, is purse-snatched along a fashionable thoroughfare. Later, her discarded wallet turns up on the floor of a parking lot, and in the hands of felon Georges Palet (Andre Dussollier), a husband and father with serious issues weighing him down (he seems to have killed his mother). He also has a fixation with aviation, and that Marguerite's pilot's license is in her wallet is all that's needed to set Georges off.

Between wild speculations and romantic fantasies, Georges progresses from wallet savior to stalker, one with whom the police have to have a word (Mathieu Amalric, as the cop, is priceless). Marguerite is at first annoyed, a bit frightened, perhaps angered by Georges. Eventually, however, she comes around. Which, of course, is exactly what happens. In fairy tales.