Veteran Depardieu plays a has-been crooner working the dance-halls, restaurants and retirement homes of an unremarkable French city. Sporting provincial fashion and a decidedly provincial hair-cut, he’s committed to his place in the market. It’s a good living for the divorcee, and, truth be told, his soggy love-songs touch peoples hearts. Giannoli, directing his own script, has created a refined and tender portrait of aspiration and amour. Pivotal is Depardieu’s convincing ease as Alain Moreau, a beguiling mix of resignation and hope.

Particularly after a drunken night with a strikingly beautiful, young woman. Marion is wary of this self-deprecating ‘lady killer’ and his practised charms; not only because of his veiled motives but her own emotional fragility. She is recently estranged from her young son and feels the pain of failed motherhood. Yet they’re drawn together from a sense of displaced longing and begin to negotiate the terms of an unlikely friendship.

That Giannoli avoids an anticipated minefield of clichés is the first of many, pleasant surprises. Alain is not a washed-up tragic any more than Marion a skittish innocent in need of sage advice. They’re fully realised characters whose tangible authenticity gives Giannoli the latitude to create a love story of sublime resonance for young and not-so-young alike. But foremost is Depardieu in one of finest performances – a bewitching illustration of charismatic restraint. Like his songs, he blends charm and corn with such devastating results that we really don’t mind that The Singer takes a little too long to get to a too sudden ending. But what an ending, a high-note of gentle choreography as two lost souls finally connect in the dark.

// COLIN FRASER