Louis Garrel and Laetitia Casta in A Faithful Man (Kino Lorber)

Pity poor Abel, a young Parisian who not only falls for rank manipulation by the two women in his life but heads off on a wild goose chase engineered by a small child. Louis Garrel directs and stars in a story of a hapless swain schlepping his bags between apartments, hurled from pillar to post by others’ wiles. His A Faithful Man feels like an insubstantial and fatally bougie story at first. Luckily, deadpan humor and a dash of poetic rue save the day.

The film opens with a shocker. As Abel routinely heads to work, his longtime live-in girlfriend, Marianne (Laetitia Casta), interrupts him with a major confession. Not only is she pregnant by Abel’s friend Paul, but she’ll be marrying him in 10 days’ time, which means Abel has to move out tout de suite. Garrel’s wary, wide-eyed wary processing of this bombshell, given plenty of time to unfold in a leisurely paced shot, sets the bemused tone going forward.

Cut to nearly 10 years later. Paul has suddenly and unexpectedly died, and Abel reconnects with Marianne at his funeral. Abel’s never really moved on from their relationship, and conditions look promising for a reunion. Only Marianne’s troubled young son is having none of the rekindled romance, and the late Paul’s impetuous younger sister Eva (Lily-Rose Depp) has designs on Abel that will not rest until she has captured his heart. Will Marianne and Paul get a second chance? As his fate is decided, Abel lugubriously trundles from arrondissement to arrondissement, recalling the cat-carrying wanderer Llewyn Davis out of the Coen brothers’ movie.

The film’s flimsy premise can make a viewer feel restless. A suspicion of murder tossed in to thicken the plot doesn’t really work, and bursts of multiple voice-overs revealing the characters’ thoughts occasionally fall short of their dramatic intent. But well-observed moments and strong performances give the movie unexpected staying power. Garrel brings low-key charm to an outwardly passive protagonist more emotionally clued-in than he seems. Casta lets us glimpse the sorrow hiding beneath a veneer of breezy, self-serving caprice, and Depp captures the breathless intensity of (quickly punctured) youthful infatuation. The three communicate humor, pathos, and solid chemistry in their interactions, and these go a long way toward making their relationships feel believable and poignant. Not especially complex or ambitious at first sight, A Faithful Man ends up touching you a little deeper than you thought it would.