A man and his young maid: A love story

What's the Neil Young song? "A Man Needs a Maid"?Well, Jacques (Jean-Pierre Bacri), a depressed Paris recording engineer whose wife has left him and whose apartment is a mess, needs one, and in Claude Berri's micro-eventful The Housekeeper, that's what he gets.

Of course, she's young and scruffily sexy, and after a few weeks of dusting and sweeping, she moves in with Jacques. Adapted from a popular French novel and brought to the screen with off-handed charm, The Housekeeper manages, despite its middle-aged male-fantasy scenario, to steer clear of the predictable - or, at the very least, give the predictable some real human dimension.

Emilie Dequenne, the Belgian actress who made a striking debut in 1999's hard-edged Rosetta, is the voluptuous tattooed domestic. Her Laura is a needy, isolated young woman who latches on to Jacques with quiet desperation. As the relationship changes from employee-employer to surrogate father-daughter to lovers, the strengths and weaknesses of their characters are revealed. A getaway to Brittany, where Jacques and Laura stay in the house of an artist friend, shifts from idyllic to ironic over a few meals and visits to the beach.

Possession, humiliation, jealousy, revelation . . . they're all painted in light, swift strokes by the veteran director and his two stars.

Contact movie critic Steven Rea at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com.

The Housekeeper *** (out of four stars)

Written and directed by Claude Berri. With Jean-Pierre Bacri and Emilie Dequenne. In French with subtitles.

Running time: 1 hour, 30 mins.

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (sex, nudity, adult themes)

Playing at: Ritz East and Ritz Sixteen/NJ