The ingenuous nature and bad French of Bernal's Stéphane endear him immediately to the sensible and unpretentious Stéphanie, played with effortless charm by Gainsbourg. When he presents a pair of glasses he's invented to make life appear in 3-D, she replies simply, "But isn't life already in 3-D?" She can't resist trying them on anyway and gushes, "It's true; they're fun!" She in turn is a toymaker, creating worlds with her hands that Stéphane can only conceive in his mind. He helps her build a boat, and suddenly cellophane is coming out of the water faucet and mounds of cotton are suspended in the air. In a perfect world these two would live happily ever after, but in the disjointed world of Stéphane's mind, things just aren't what they seem.

Motion pictures