Movie spotlight: 'The Fairy'

There may be better films in the theaters, but there surely is none easier to like than "The Fairy." This crazy featherweight comedy is packed with immediate pleasures: impeccably designed sight gags, daredevil physical comedy, stylized colors and music.

The main characters are Dom (Dominique Abel), a night clerk in a shabby Le Havre hotel, and Fiona (Fiona Gordon), who arrives at the check-in desk and announces she is a fairy. Abel and Gordon are professional circus clowns and a couple in real life, and they interlock so seamlessly onscreen that you know they are destined to fall in love.

In their courtship, they transform the drab industrial port city into a goofy wonderland. They swim to the bottom of the sea and do a loony dance in kelp swimwear. They entangle themselves inside a gigantic overcoat and become a bizarre composite person. They bump up against bossy authority figures but always manage to lasso reality.

Abel and Gordon co-directed with their co-star, Bruno Romy. The three are not storytellers. The action is elliptical, and entire scenes are hurried along with the barest acknowledgement.

Where the filmmakers dazzle is in their depiction of motion. I can't think of a working director who films movement more graciously, joyfully and beautifully. Their clowning is hilarious rubber-band ballet.

The dialogue is minimal, but it hardly matters. When your performers have faces and bodies this expressive, who needs words? (Unrated. In subtitled French.)

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