If there’s anything we’ve learned from François Ozon‘s past work it’s this: The man is unafraid to explore boundaries of sexuality. And he does it extremely well (see: Young & Beautiful, 8 Women, In the House, Swimming Pool). While his latest film The New Girlfriend may not be his best exploration in this area, we certainly enjoyed the effort from him, as well has the daring performance from lead actor Romain Duris, who makes this role his best to date.

The opening montages contain so much detail yet such brevity that only a few filmmakers such as Ozon can pull off. During the opening credits a woman is shown in her wedding dress before slowly revealed that she’s lying in a casket. As close ones mourn the loss of Laura, her best friend Claire (Anaïs Demoustier) makes a speech about how they first met. Set to a somber duo of piano and violin, flashbacks show how their friendship blossomed from grade school and how they eventually met their future husbands. Though after Laura gave birth to her child she tragically passed away, leaving behind her child and her husband David (Duris). This all happens within about 5 minutes and it’s easily the best edited segment of the entire film.

Claire has a hard time dealing with the fact that her best friend is no longer with her, but holds up her promise of looking after David and the newborn. One day as Claire is checking to see how the two are handling Laura’s passing, she discovers one of David’s most secret pleasures–dressing up as a woman. David confesses to this desire, but also points out that the baby misses a feminine presence.

Some time passes before Claire can fully process and accept David’s eagerness to dress as a woman. During that same time David finally realizes that the baby was more of an excuse and that he actually wants to become a woman. So he develops a whole new personality when he puts on the wig and dress and prefers to go by the name Virginia. Because Claire is the only one who knows about this secret and the only one he trusts, the two end up spending a great deal of time together, forming a stronger bond than they ever had before.

Most of the action in The New Girlfriend happens early on, making the middle section feel lengthy until finally some late film developments add a little excitement back. Ozon mixes in some humor here and there to help lighten things up, but ultimately it’s the actors that make us keep watching. Duris is stellar putting on a two-for-one show playing both a male and female character who struggle with finding themselves. Demoustier is also excellent playing an equally confused character the audience can sympathize with.

But the performances and the astute filmmaking alone won’t be enough to win over audiences. And even if Ozon isn’t the type of director who aims to please the masses, The New Girlfriend stalls just enough for it to fall short of something great.

No filmmaker could pull off adapting Boris Vian’s “unfilmable” novel better than the inventive Michel Gondry. Before the opening titles finish Gondry demonstrates his trademark whimsy and wacky production style; a chef receives ingredients through a television set, sunlight creates guitar strings, an assembly line of people rapidly finishing sentences on typewriters passing by on conveyor belts, and a doorbell that turns into a spider-like creature. You’ll be in for a long film if the opening sequence doesn’t fascinate you. Mood Indigo is an ambitious visual feast with more flair than underlying substance, ultimately becoming overwhelming by the end.

Colin (Romain Duris) is a wealthy inventor who lives in an extravagant Parisian apartment with his chef/lawyer/mentor Nicolas (Omar Sy). He cheerfully shows off his latest invention called a pianocktail, a piano that translates musical notes into a different cocktail flavors. But Colin’s mood quickly changes upon realizing the one thing missing from his life is love. Suddenly he decides his solitude is absolutely dreadful and demands to fall in love. So he sets out to accomplish just that.

At a dinner party, Colin instantly falls in love with a “girl like a Duke Ellington tune” named Chloe, played by the dashing Audrey Tautou. After wooing her by dancing the biglemoi, a jazzy dance in which the dancer’s legs stretch to impossible proportions, Colin decides to take her hand in marriage. But shortly after they do, Chloe begins to have fainting spells caused by a flower growing inside her lungs.

The amount of creative visual flair found in Mood Indigo is second to none. Gondry creates a fantasy dream world where underground forests exist along with a pair of shoes that have a mind of their own and shadows that can chase after you. One of the most memorable scenes is when the couple happily float above Paris in a cloud ride operated by a large crane (a literal expression of the phrase ‘floating on a cloud’). Gondry also shows off his technical skills. In an impressive honeymoon sequence, he implements a split-screen to divide the same shot where it’s raining on one side and sunny on the other. The contrast between the weather signifies change as the second half of Mood Indigo gets a little dark. Well, dark for a Gondry film anyways. Gloom visually settles in when the color of everything fades to monochrome and walls literally shrink to close in on characters.

While it’s a pleasure to marvel at these visuals, they eventually grow tiresome by the end of the two-hour film (note: Gondry did re-edit the film for the US release which cuts out about 30 minutes). That’s because almost every scene has something animating, morphing, or twitching. It simply becomes overstimulating. Also, the stop-motion animation adds charm and visual flair but rarely offers meaningful substance to the scene.

The biggest issue with Mood Indigo is not being able to balance the wildly imaginative cinematography with meaningful storytelling. Sometimes the film is weird just to be weird—a feat that Gondry has mastered — resulting in more fluff than essential moments. It’s hard to put all the blame on Gondry (he did adapt the story from a highly experimental novel), but none of the emotional notes were felt between the two leads despite solid performances from both. Mood Indigo has breathtaking imagery and heaps of whimsical charm, but is often exhausting at the same time.

Set in late ’50s Paris, Populaire is a loving throwback to the saccharine rom-coms of that decade, dipped in candy coating and wrapped in bright art-deco packaging. It’s scrumptious with every bite, and it’ll make you smile, but it lacks the substance and sustenance of a main course movie. In terms of narrative, this is a straightforward and predictably plotted tale of budding romance between a bullheaded guy and a frisky gal, adding nothing new to the traditional rom-com template. Nothing, that is, except for bestowing upon its heroine the peculiar gift of lightning-fast, immaculately manicured fingers.

Deborah Francois, who bears a striking resemblance to Audrey Hepburn (she emanates the same quirky charm as well), plays Rose Pamphyle, a 20-something blond diamond in the rough from a small town in Normandy who auditions for a secretary position (a coveted one in the pre-feminist era) with a dashing, suit-wearing playboy insurance agent named Louis Echard (Romain Duris). Rose wins the position after transcribing an office note on a typewriter with enough speed to blow back Echard’s perfectly parted hairdo, despite using the “double-pointer-finger” technique typically employed by beginner typists and legally blind grandmas.

As it turns out, Rose is a crummy secretary, accidentally shredding important documents and knocking things over on the regular (she’s a fine cutesy klutz), but she’s obviously some sort of typewriter prodigy. Echard gives her a bizarre ultimatum: she must win the local speed typing competition or she loses her job. She must live with him at his mansion and train day and night, minimizing her secretary work to hobby status. With Echard’s relentless, intensive coaching, she learns to type with all ten of her digits and work her way from French provincial competitions to the speed typing world championships in New York City. She becomes somewhat of a speed typing rock star (groupies and all) and an unwitting feminist icon. (The late ’50s was a turning point for the women’s movement and the peak of teen fanaticism like Beatlemania, which makes the setting apt.)

The conceit is clearly contrived, but the sights and sounds of French director Regis Roinsard’s debut feature are so overloaded with charm that you might not be bothered. Cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman, who received praise and an Oscar nod for his stunning work on 2011’s The Artist, dazzles with a dreamy ’50s pastel-painted wonderland that won me over. Roinsard and Schiffman use every trick in the book in their attempt to make the speed typing face-offs look and feel as exciting as possible—they cyclone the camera around the typists, they hang the camera high, they lay it low, they use dolly shots, split screens, close-ups of Francois’ determined eyes and Revlon-ad-worthy hands tapping away furioiusly. Their techniques are loud, overshot, and overblown, but they get the job done—the climactic typefests are the most thrilling sequences in the picture. Other sequences, like a stock montage of Echard training Rose like she’s a professional boxer (what the hell does jogging have to do with typing?) completely miss the mark.

When Echard more or less holds Rose hostage in his swanky chateau, callously bossing her around though he’d never admit to how much he adores her company, the setup and their chemistry recalls Beauty and the Beast, particularly Cocteau’s classic rendition. (“La Belle!!!”) Duris plays a great jerk, though he makes sure to let just enough heart shine through his bad-boy veneer. He sneers when he smiles and smirks when he sneers, exuding attitude all the way. Francois’ soft, classic beauty and natural intelligence jibe well with Duris’ dastardly charm, though they’re never given any dialogue together that comes close to being interesting. Most of their chemistry is cultivated through the way they move around each other, the glances they cast, and the way they touch (lots of hand-flirt close-ups.) There’s a subplot involving Echard’s American best friend, Bob (Shaun Benson) and his gorgeous wife, Marie (Berenice Bejo), who happens to be Echard’s ex-lover. Duris and Bejo share a revealing exchange in the latter half of the film that’s the only scene in the film with any emotional depth.

The film owes a lot to Doris Day and Rock Hudson and their classic sugary ’50s comedies. In fact, it might owe everything to them—Roinsard and company don’t do much to build upon the foundation set over half a century ago. Despite a painful lack of narrative originality, Populaire‘s peppy charm, game cast, and spectacular bubblegum imagery save the day and make it fun, at least.

It’s hard not to feel underwhelmed when, in the film’s dramatic crescendo, Echard tells Rose goodbye forever in a cold parking lot and she melodramatically retorts, “Je t’aime!!!” “Je t’aime” is a bit much, Populaire. You look mighty fine, but “love” is a strong word, and sadly, I find I’m only “in like” with you.