For those with multiple personalities, The Girl from Monaco (La Fille de Monaco, directed by Anne Fontaine), could possibly do more good than therapy.

Is it a light romantic comedy of a middle-aged lawyer's ego and the uninhibited sexual spirit of a ditzy television weather girl, combined with a trial for murder and hints of the Russian mafia? Is it a male melodrama of irony and rue where a middle-aged lawyer's gonads lead him into humiliating situations that are at once humorous and embarrassing, and where an erotic and selfish female weather reader is manipulating his hormones? Is it a sad set of experiences where lust and manipulation lead to unexpected but justifiable justice, only leavened by the sense that certain actions were well-served and that the protagonists understand, finally, their behavior?

In other words, The Girl from Monaco is a movie with, at times, great charm and amusement, but which falls on its face because the director cannot make up her mind what she wants her movie to be about. With each shift into the next line of the story, we can't help but finally realize that the line we just left is something we'd rather stay with. Fontaine isn't deliberately leading us on, in my opinion, but she seems to keep changing her idea of the house she's building after construction has started.

Bertrand Beauvois (Fabrice Luchini) has traveled from Paris to Monaco to defend a woman charged with murdering a man she may or may not have been having an affair with. Beauvois is a top lawyer who wins his cases but seems to have less luck with women. He's a whiz with words, though. Because the murdered man was a Russian with Russian mafia connections, Beauvois is assigned protection, Christophe Abadi (Roschdy Zem). He's a tall, lean, taciturn man who insists on doing his job. When Beauvois, a pale, unimpressive-looking man with a modest sense of humor along with a sense of his own importance, meets Audrey Varelia (Louise Bourgoin), the ditzy, uninhibited weather reader, we can see speculation move to lust with all the single-minded drive of a teen-ager looking at a Playboy centerfold. What we also see is Christophe's disapproval...and we see Audrey's uninhibited, free-spirited ways with her body that completely capture this little lawyer. Trust me, this all is played for amusement centering on the fragile egos of middle-aged men who actually believe gorgeous young women may fall for them. When we see what a collection of partying freeloaders Audrey runs with, the movie starts making us uneasy. When we see how casually manipulative Audrey can be, using her erotic charms to capture poor Bertrand by his hormones, it's hard not to smile...and be uneasy. All the while the silent and serious Christophe tries to keep Bertrand ready for the trial each day. As Christophe does his job, it turns out he might have a bit of history with Audrey. She seems to have known, in exactly the Biblical sense, just about every man she's ever met.

What can I say? Bertrand gets his. Christophe gets his. Audrey gets hers. I'm not talking death. Necessarily. And I'm not talking about grim irony. It's just that a movie, even one with all the finely nuanced amusement of the first third of this one, that ends with the audience likely giving a shrug hasn't, in my opinion, been able to hold itself together.

Fabrice Luchini is excellent. Roschdy Zem is impressive. And blond, built Louise Bourgoin, in her first movie, managed to keep me lusting after her even when the last thing I knew I'd want would be to find myself in Bertrand Beauvois's shoes. The movie isn't a mess by any means. It just doesn't know what it wants to be.

With a title like "The Girl from Monaco", a picture of a bodacious babe on the cover, and a description about a neurotic lawyer defending a gangster's mother charged with the murder of a gigolo, I figured this would be a crazy comedy... something between "Legally Blonde" and "My Cousin Vinny" but in French. Boy was I wrong.

Certain filmgoers react negatively when they don't get what they expect. Me, I don't care as long as it's good. And this movie is definitely good. It begins with enough light-hearted comedy to draw you in at the opening scene. Other good laughs are peppered throughout the first half. But you soon realize that it's all a clever candy-coating, masking a dark, winding story beneath. In that respect, I'd compare it to "Art School Confidential" (2006) or "Jeux d'enfants" (2003) or even "Good Morning Vietnam" (1987) which begin as comedies but soon trick us down a different path.

If you go into this film with zero expectations, or better yet, expecting to be led to an unknown destination, I can't imagine you not liking this film. The acting is top notch, creating believable characters who are instantly likable despite their personality quirks. Even the Girl, who is basically a slut of the highest magnitude, comes across as cute, charming and breezy. It's hard not to see elements of the legendary Brigitte Bardot in her unapologetic sexuality.

And that's what this movie is really about: expression vs repression, openness vs modesty, freedom vs self-control. And we see the crazy results of people attempting to bridge between the two worlds. This movie is every bit as compelling as the Bardot films that first explored these sexually-charged themes almost 50 years ago. We see that they're still topical today.

A quick note about content... Even though this is a very sexual story, it's not too explicit, and I think there's only 1 brief nude scene (the girl topless in bed). Most of the steamy stuff is implied through dialogue.

Watch this back-to-back with the Bardot classics "And God Created Woman", "Night Heaven Fell", "Love is My Profession", and so on. Maybe you'll agree it's been a while since a director has been able to capture that same spirit. This movie is so much more than a comedy. Soooo much more.

Alas, my Summary isn't going to work completely in either French or English: The French pronounce Ann Fontaine's surname Fontenay which means they're unlikely to get the Trevi word-play but on the other hand coin is French for corner so a by-lingual person will twig that I'm referring to the three corners Fontaine brings together here, not so much doctor, lawyer, Indian chief as lawyer, weather girl and bodyguard. Billy Wilder has a lot to answer for on several counts but not least for his masterpiece (or one of them) The Apartment which is a laugh-out-loud comedy for the first hour then switches effortlessly to drama and because it was Wilder he made it look so easy that everybody and his uncle Max thinks he can do it too. Ann Fontaine isn't everybody; with twelve complete films under her belt and a thirteenth in the Cutting Rooms she's a formidable talent, one of an elite group of female French directors who have given me personally hours of pleasure - I'm referring to, in any order you like, Marion Vernoux, Nicole Garcia, Valerie Lemercier, Toni Marshall, Danielle Thompson, Agnes Jaoui, Noemie Chomsky, Diane Kurys et al. If this isn't quite top-drawer Fontaine it'll do until another top-drawer Fontaine comes along. Fabrice Luchini, that most quirky of French actors both on stage and screen (and rumored to be engaged to Fontaine, who may herself still be married or may not have been married as the case may be - and you think THIS film is ambiguous) is at the head of proceedings as a top avocat shipped to Monaco to defend the mother of a gangster (Stephane Audran wasted) on a charge of murdering a gigolo; because of the delicate nature of the case the gangster supplies Luchini with a bodyguard who may or may not develop a sexual attraction to Luchini; the third element is a local weather girl with a moral compass that makes Sadie Thompson look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Inevitably the up-tight lawyer allows himself to be seduced by the bimbo half his age and equally inevitably it ends in tears. Though I enjoyed it, as I have all the Fontaine films I have seen I wouldn't in this case (unlike the others) want to see it again.