Romain Duris made an indelible, slightly greasy mark on the screen with his amazing performance in 2005’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped as a would-be concert pianist whose Gallic Tiger Beat looks hid a center of pure twitchy psychosis. Given Duris’s onscreen history, the thought of him gamboling his way through a romantic comedy may not be quite as alarming as, say, that of Vincent Gallo, but it still carries an intriguing anything-could-happen charge.

The glittery, ripe for remaking Heartbreaker manages to coast for quite a while on its star’s feral, bedraggled magnetism, but eventually degrades into amiable fluff. Feel free to wander out for popcorn at any given moment. Wearing a variety of designer suits and stubble, Duris plays the cynical, whisper-thin leader of a high-tech Impossible Mission Force that specializes in breaking up relationships. While on the run from the mob, he accepts an assignment to change the mind of a stone-hearted bride-to-be (Vanessa Paradis), poses as her bodyguard, and, well, fill in the blanks from there.

First-time director Pascal Chaumeil certainly knows his way around a sight gag and proves to be unusually generous to his supporting cast (particularly when it comes to the scene-stealing Héléna Noguerra, as Paradis’s gleeful megaslut of a best friend). Despite a few nice early touches and the ready volatility of his film’s star, however, it quickly becomes apparent that veering off course from the standard rom-com flowchart was never really considered. When a movie’s plot hinges on the use of Wham!’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” and a re-created scene from Dirty Dancing, the idea of Hollywoodization seems redundant. Heartbreaker: Pierrot le Meh