She might be the guiding spirit behind the fictional Broadway musical that’s the subject of the television drama Smash, but the last place you’d expect to find Marilyn Monroe is in a dreary French town in winter. But that’s where she is—sort of, in the French thriller Nobody Else but You, in the form of actress Candice Lecoeur (played with gleeful abandon by Sophie Quinton), an M. M. lookalike whose regional success as the face of a local cheese was her high watermark as a celebrity.

It’s not a spoiler to note that the movie—which is narrated by Candice—begins with the discovery of her lifeless body in the snow, witnessed by David Rousseau (an amusingly befuddled Jean-Paul Rouve), who just happens to be driving past as the authorities take her away. David, an author of popular crime novels with a bad case of writer’s block, becomes fascinated by Candice’s case—her death is ruled a suicide—and he begins snooping around the provincial town she lived and died in.

David discovers more than the local cops (who have their own secrets) about the circumstances surrounding Candice’s demise. He reads her diaries, talks to her hair stylist, and even gets her psychiatrist to share intimate details. Needless to say, he uncovers facts about her affairs, career, depression that allow her existence to become clearer in his mind, especially when he attends her memorial service and meets other important players in her fatally melodramatic life.

Don’t let the review blurbs comparing this to the Coen brothers and David Lynch make you think that Nobody Else but You is Fargo or Twin Peaks revisited (the original French title, Poupoupidou, more directly makes the Marilyn connection). Rather, writer-director Gérald Hustache-Mathieu stakes out his own skewered territory with greyish—rather than black—humor, like with the cherished pet that David’s aunt bequeaths to him—unfortunately, it’s dead and stuffed—or the jokey musical cues. “California Dreamin’” (José Feliciano’s slowed down cover version) plays along during a car ride through a wintry landscape.

At times, Hustache-Mathieu relies too heavily on cuteness, as when Candice warbles “Happy Birthday, Mister President” to a local (and very married) political leader a la Marilyn in a very public setting, or when his protagonists “meet” fancifully (which uncomfortably reminded me of a similar fantasy moment in Madonna’s misbegotten W. E.). But the director redeems himself with a surprising semi-twist ending that cleverly ties together the various loose ends of David and Candice’s unconsummated relationship.