Paper Souls, film review: Julie Gayet gives a warm performance in dark romantic comedy

(TBC) Vincent Lannoo, 90 mins Starring: Julie Gayet, Stéphane Guillon, Pierre Richard

Stéphane Guillon, Julie Gayet and Jonathan Zaccaï in ‘Paper Souls’

Julie Gayet, in the news more frequently for her trysts with President Hollande than for her acting, gives a warm and humorous performance in this dark romantic comedy.

She plays Emma, a widow and bookshop owner with a young son. Stéphane Guillon is Paul, the self-pitying novelist, likewise getting over the death of his spouse, who now earns his living writing funeral orations.

Emma hires Paul to write about her late husband so that her son will have something to remember him by. Then, bizarrely, the dead husband (who looks suspiciously like Paul) turns up. It's the kind of conceit you can imagine being used in an Ernst Lubitsch comedy.

The director Vincent Lannoo doesn't have quite the Lubitsch touch but, in its own slightly flimsy way, Paper Souls makes pleasant enough viewing.