Fridae

Hunting & Gathering is a gentle and sweet-natured drama based on a bestselling French novel about three young people who unexpectedly become each other's keys to unlocking the strong, self-reliant individuals they were destined to become.

It stars pixie-faced Audrey Tatou as a lonely cleaner who yearns for some romance, Guillaume Canet as a frustrated cook who has to care for his aged grandmother, and Laurent Stocker as a stuttering actor-wannabe.

Laurent and Audrey become friends after noticing each other's quirks at the local supermarket. When Laurent decides to invite Audrey to stay with him and his roommate Guillaume in his spacious apartment, the dynamics of the household turns tense.

Gradually, the three realise that their differing attitudes towards life are just the antidotes they need to pull themselves out of their ruts...

Directed by Claude Berri, Hunting & Gathering is as French a film as you can get. It is souffle-light and filled with the sort of low-key incidental drama that is pleasant and diverting but not particularly spectacular.

Though it works well within its own perimeters, what's somewhat disappointing about this film is that Laurent's sexually ambivalent character ends up falling in love and proposing to a woman � even though we could have sworn on Oscar Wilde's grave that he was gay, gay, gay.

Hunting & Gathering is strictly for Francophiles.