There's a nice little thriller at the center of Claude Lelouch's latest film, but the packaging is so complicated that you end up more aggravated than on edge. Smush-faced Dominique Pinon plays Louis, a man who just happens to be hanging around the gas station where Huguette (Audrey Dana), on the way to introduce her parents to her physician fiancé, gets unceremoniously dumped. Like the serial murderer whose escape is at that moment saturating the airwaves, Louis uses card tricks to charm strangers and earn their trust. He tells Huguette he's a ghostwriter for her favorite mass-market novelist, and, impressed, she asks him to pose as her fiancé on the trip to her childhood home. But he's a little too good at selling his new identity—might his far-fetched ghostwriter claim be a put-on as well?

Nope. A mere half-hour or so into the running time, the film's perspective pulls way back, confirming Louis as the brains behind the novelist (Fanny Ardant) and suddenly shoving the characters into new plots and schemes and rabbit holes. Roman de Gare is too ADD to build any one mood, and the result is a forgettable clutter.