André (stand-up comedian Debbouze) is a lying screw-up who dodges his way round Paris while owing a lot of money to a lot of unsavoury people. And while he has a lot of excuses, he doesn’t have a lot of time.

In desperation, he prepares to end his lot by throwing himself into the Seine. But when he sees a statuesque blonde (Danish tasty Rasmussen) who has a similar idea, he switches from suicide to saviour.

Her name is Angela and, towering over André like a chain-smoking Cameron Diaz after a growth spurt, she turns out to be a godsend. Since André gave her back her life, she vows to do the same for him.

First, they need to straighten out his debts. Where ten minutes of André's babbling fails to impress shady shylock Franck (Melki), an hour alone with Angela is a different matter.

Although André is off the hook, he hates the idea of Angela prostituting herself for his benefit. After paying off another lender, his guilt deepens when he blows their ill-gotten gains and she unhesitatingly volunteers to earn more by hustling the dance floor at a nightclub.

Distraught and utterly smitten, André spills his heart. Then Angela tells him the surprising - and frankly unbelievable - truth about herself.

She is, she says, a reflection of himself. André is perturbed "A six-foot slut?" That he can accept, but not her explanation that they can never be together...

Though this Parisian romance finds writer/director Luc Besson at his most whimsical and restrained - and despite providing a dinky monochrome travelogue to the city - it's still not the most tender or subtle love story ever told.

The message that one can only love others after learning to love oneself is more of an angry prod in the chest than a gentle tug at the heart-strings.

But it has a good heart, with Debbouze's roguish satellite spinning engagingly around Rasmussen's heavenly body.

And after Anne Parillaud's Nikita, Natalie Portman in Leon, and Milla Jovovich in The Fifth Element and as Joan of Arc in The Messenger, it's obvious that Besson likes his leading ladies to be in touch with their masculine side.

Certainly, nobody has done more to put the bobbed haircut to the forefront of cinema.

Elliott Noble