Vincent Dedienne and Catherine Frot in The Rose Maker (Music Box Films)

When a film opens with Dean Martin crooning “Red Roses for a Blue Lady” over the credits, how can you help but be charmed immediately? French director Pierre Pinaud’s engaging, if familiar, cinematic bonbon owes its appeal to the winning performance by Catherine Frot (Marguerite) and its unusual subject, the rarified world of rose breeding and flower competitions.

Frot plays Eve Vernet, a pipe-smoking horticulturist of a certain age who is struggling to manage her beloved father’s rose farm but who now faces bankruptcy. Things are so dire financially she can’t even afford a booth at a prestigious rose festival, where once again she is bested by corporate rosarian Lamarzelle (an unctuous Vincent Dedienne), who wins the grand prize with a new hybrid. Worse, he’s itching to buy her out and add Roses Vernet to his floral empire.

Eve’s fortunes change when her anxious assistant, Véra (Olivia Côte), hires three new employees from a work rehabilitation program: surly Fred (rapper Melan Omerta, making an impressive feature debut), over-the-hill Samir (Fatsah Bouyahmed), and socially awkward Nadège (Marie Petiot). None of them have horticultural experience, and when Eve takes them to the rose fields, Fred complains, “Fuck, it smells like old lady here.”

It’s not a promising start, but as the bills accumulate and the orders dry up, desperate times call for desperate measures. Studying Fred’s criminal record, a determined Eve concocts a scheme to use his burglary skills to infiltrate Lamarzelle’s high-tech nursery. She explains to the reluctant Fred, who doesn’t want to go back to jail, that she only wants to “borrow” a rare plant to hybridize with her own strain in the hopes of creating a new prize-winning rose. What follows next is not quite Ocean’s 11, but the caper proves to be quite the employer-employee bonding experience.

As the rose-growing season advances and Eve and her staff begin to understand each other, the script by Pinaud and Fadette Drouard in collaboration with Philippe Le Guay narrows in on the budding maternal-filial relationship between the never-married, childless Eve and Fred, a street kid longing to reconnect with his rejecting parents. Although viewers can easily guess where the plot is headed (Eve discovers that Fred has an extraordinary olfactory skill), the chemistry between the two actors overcomes the predictable contrivances.

While the story lines of the other supporting characters are not as well developed, the appealing humanity of Véra, Samir, and Nadège is testimony to the performers’ skills. But the star of the show remains the charismatic Frot. She adds emotional depth to what could have been a superficial soufflé of a comedy. Adding to the enjoyment of this entertaining Gallic David and Goliath tale are Mathieu Lamboley’s playful score and Guillaume Deffontaines’s luscious photography, which captures the beauty of the French countryside and the sensual glory of Eve’s roses. Oh, for the revival of Odorama!