Writer/director Christopher Honore follows up Ma Mere, his controversial Georges Bataille adaptation, with this nimble chamber drama. Starring two of the most exciting young actors in European cinema, Romain Duris and Louis Garrel, the deftly executed Dans Paris is simultaneously a love-letter to the titular city, an affectionate homage to the French New Wave, and a moving study of a middle-class family haunted by the suicide of a teenage daughter.

Dans Paris unfolds just before Christmas, with photographer Paul (Romain Duris) seriously depressed about his recent break-up with girlfriend Anna (Joana Preiss). He has retreated to his father's flat near the Eiffel Tower, where his divorced Dad Mirko (Guy Marchand) frets and fusses over his well-being. Younger brother Jonathan (Louis Garrel) tries to raise Paul's spirits by undertaking a dash across town to a department store, although memories of their dead sister Claire, who took her own life, keep resurfacing.

"A PLEASURE TO WATCH"

The sort of freewheeling film where a character announces to the camera that "I'm not the story's hero, I am the narrator", and where lovers sing duets to one another over the telephone, Dans Paris might be dismissed as a knowing pastiche. However, it engages our emotions, and Honore offsets the melancholic mood with bursts of euphoria: see the way Paul animatedly responds to hearing Kim Wilde's song Cambodia, or how Jonathan charmingly conducts a series of romantic trysts. And it's a pleasure to watch Duris and Garrel, both cast here against type, conveying their playful yet genuinely tender fraternal relationship.

Dans Paris is released in UK cinemas on Friday 4th May 2007.