There's no reason this cliché-ridden French drama should work, but it does, and there's the beauty of it.

A sweet puff of a film, My Afternoons With Margueritte is as disarming as it is absurd.

[Depardieu] is as emblematic of his country as Tom Hanks is of ours, and "My Afternoons With Margueritte" is his "Forrest Gump." Only better.

The scenes between Germain and Margueritte are so strong that other sequences almost feel like filler.