Emmanuel Mouret's Vénus et Fleur (2004)

The very Rohmerian film director Emmanuel Mouret is concerned with the twists and turns, the understandings and the misunderstandings, of the heart. He was born in Marseille, and this – his second feature – is set in the city. The two principal characters are Vénus (Veroushka Knoge) and Fleur (Isabelle Pirès), followed by (in both senses) Dieu (Frédéric Niedermayer) and Bonheur (Julien Imbert): the name Dieu is perhaps a joke as the producer was Frédéric Niedermayer, and Bonheur may well be a prediction of the future.

Fleur's parents in Paris, where all three live, have paid for their daughter to spend her holidays in a small house in Marseille, and by chance Fleur picks up another young woman's identical bag in a café, which Vénus returns to exchange for her own. Although the two women are very different from each other – the Russian Vénus being extroverted, obsessed with young men, in general quite superficial, Vénus being introverted, shy with people and her affections and bookish (she is reading Pessoa's Le Livre de la tranquillité) – they strike a chord, and Fleur invites Vénus to stay with her.

The ill-matched pair make for the beach but Vénus's attempts to lure men by pretending to accidentally hit them with a beach ball fall flat and they return home manless. The only man interested initially is Dieu, a neighbour, but Vénus is at first uninterested, and Fleur has no interest at all. And then Bonheur – a friend of Fleur's brother – arrives for a few days and although both women are interested it's agreed that he's for Vénus, who's keen to marry a Frenchman and have dual nationality children.

One day Bonheur leaves Marseille for a few days walking, leaving Vénus in the rapacious hands of Dieu. But Bonheur returns unexpectedly and Fleur is forced to lie, saying Vénus is out for the day, saying there's no food in the house, and they go looking (fruitlessly) for an open restaurant, make do with a baguette sandwich, listen to someone playing guitar on the beach, where they innocently spend the night.

The next day Bonheur phones Fleur to tell her to meet him as he has something of vital importance to tell her: since the previous year when he met her he is obsessed with her, but (always mindful that she's 'given' him to Vénus), Fleur tells him that the feeling isn't mutual. Dieu tries it on with Fleur to no avail, Vénus comes in after being with Bonheur and it's obviously not worked out, and Dieu makes an exit, cock between his legs.

Then the next day Vénus leaves, still longing for contact, and Bonheur phones from his two-star hotel in the city to say goodbye as he's leaving. Even before Fleur rushes out and they meet up, the viewer knows that he isn't going at all.

There is bang-on improvisation in this film, which has an amazing realistic quality: time I saw some more Mouret.