Sometimes you fall in love with a movie, even when you should know better. And there's a great possibility that will happen with "The Truth About Charlie." That infatuation is possible in part because the director, Jonathan Demme, uses the nervous energy that he suppressed in more formal works like "Philadelphia" and "The Silence of the Lambs." So you may be taken by the director's enormous enthusiasm, but the picture doesn't quite work.

This knockabout, moderately successful remake of the 1963 comic thriller "Charade" lacks the heartless, silken cool of the original, a lustily shallow classic peopled by stars in gorgeous bespoke clothes that seemed tailored to both their bodies and their personae. This time Mr. Demme has littered the soundtrack with a compendium of world-beat pop, movie score classics and nostalgia power pop; his eclecticism ranges from trip-hop to Henry Mancini. You almost get the feeling you have to step over his music collection, scattered across the floor, to get to the picture.

But frankly, most of the film's allure comes from the sensual, butter-voiced Thandie Newton; with her, Mr. Demme has found the 21st-century corollary to Audrey Hepburn. In "Beloved" and the slightly condescending "Besieged," Ms. Newton proved she could act. In "M:I-2" she displayed enough warmth to bring life to a laminated corpse, at least in the scenes she was in. And in "The Truth About Charlie," which opens today nationwide, she demonstrates that she has the head-turning charisma of a movie star.

She's a gamine in touch with her sexuality instead of floating slightly above it; unlike Hepburn, she's an angel whose feet touch the ground. She's so good that when she's on screen, the movie works — or at least you think it does. It's a spot-specific case of alchemy.

Ms. Newton plays the recently married Regina, who returns home to her spacious Paris flat to break off with her husband, Charlie, an art dealer who should be back from chasing down works that include a Basquiat and a Julian Schnabel. She finds him gone and the apartment so thoroughly ransacked that holes have been punched through the walls. The looters took everything but the rubble; the place now looks like a Schnabel painting.

When Charlie's corpse turns up and a pack of mysterious strangers pop around threatening Regina and asking questions about a treasure that he supposedly left behind, she's stunned. The truth about Charlie is that everybody knew more about him than she did, including the fact that he was American, not Swiss.

Regina's first hope is Joshua (Mark Wahlberg), a helpful American whose slightly closed-off smile doesn't hide the dimples in his cheeks. But when even Joshua turns out not to be what he seemed and the French police are vaguely threatening, she has to turn to Bartholomew (Tim Robbins) at the American Embassy for help.

The old-school fear in Peter Stone's script for the original "Charade" started with the concern of every newlywed: discovering that the person you married didn't exist, a potential horror back in a day when even toying with getting a divorce was almost like joining the Foreign Legion. Taking that step almost precipitated Regina's fall from grace in the original. Mr. Stone and the director, Stanley Donen, flirted with plunging their heroine into hell for claiming her freedom — using the movie saw that a woman who rends the fabric of marriage deserves trouble — and leaving her bereft of friends and husband.

"Charlie" has done nothing to supplant that motif. Even the "Charade" dreamboat — as played by Cary Grant, the epitome of such — who might be able to take her away from all that, turned out to be a looming danger. (Unfortunately, Mr. Wahlberg doesn't nearly match up in comparison to Grant.) It was in keeping with the sexual politics of the 1960's for Regina to fall for the stranger who could deliver her from, or to, evil. But for her to do the exact same thing in "Charlie" with the Wahlberg character seems incredibly sad, a good-girls-make-bad-choices psychology that belongs on "Oprah."

"Charlie" isn't helped by Mr. Wahlberg, who doesn't seem to understand the difference between a mystery and a blank. His blandness was well used in "Boogie Nights" and "The Yards"; his withholding became a kind of tension. Here he's just the one person in the picture who doesn't fall for Regina the way everyone else does.

There's an extraordinarily sexy clinch during a tango at a Parisian nightclub when Regina is tossed from partner to partner while information is being exchanged. 

But it's not with Mr. Wahlberg; rather it comes when Regina is cheek to cheek with the once-flinty Lola (Lisa Gay Hamilton), one of the greedy pursuers. Lola has softened toward Regina, and "Charlie" burns higher on the Celsius scale during their moment than in any of Regina's scenes with Joshua. Mr. Wahlberg's defiant, shoulder-first stride makes him walk like an American undercover cop; he looks not as if he's spoiling for a fight but as if he just finished one. (Though he has steamed the Boston inflections from his altar boy speech cadences, his vowel enunciation when he speaks French gives him away.)

Ms. Hamilton and the rest of the cast, notably Mr. Robbins in the Walter Matthau role from "Charade" and Ted Levine as one of the gang after Regina — do very fine work. Mr. Demme has worked with most of them before or fallen in love with them from other places. Joong-Hoon Park, another of Regina's menaces, is from the Korean action picture "Nowhere to Hide." And much of the French aspect is Mr. Demme's loving salute to the Nouvelle Vague: Anna Karina, Magali Noël and Agnès Varda are seen in small but important roles.

The most important cameo comes from Charles Aznavour, who plays himself crooning "Quand Tu M'Aimes"; a clip from "Shoot the Piano Player" runs a little later, and one shot evokes "The 400 Blows." Mr. Demme buzzes through a startling number of references to other movies, and at times it's as if he's out to defeat the Quentin Tarantino land-speed record.

There are so many film quotations that, as handsomely rendered as they are by Tak Fujimoto's dexterous cinematography, you may feel there's no there there.

The heavy scheme of reference notes brings to mind the frisky "Amélie," which was so lacking in ethnicity that Paris appeared to be Euro Disneyland. "The Truth About Charlie" is at the very least a wondrous antidote to that; one of the cops is named Dessalines, after the Haitian ruler. This Paris is filled with people of color, and the noises and music have a cultural sophistication that gives "Charlie" moral authority.

Mr. Demme, who co-wrote the screenplay, may be today's least arrogant filmmaker. And his wide-eyed sense of hippie-egalitarianism makes him nonjudgmental. This generosity extends to a pasteurizing of the chief villain's motive by the end of the film. Mr. Demme wants us to sympathize with the bad guys, but playful mercilessness is what we want from a thriller. At some point, we have to feel the villain's tart breath moistening the hair on the back of Regina's neck.

This kindness is what ties Mr. Demme to the pulse of David Byrne, with whom he collaborated on the documentary "Stop Making Sense." Few directors have been as influenced by another artist's purview as Mr. Demme has been by Mr. Byrne's funky eclecticism. The world-beat soundtrack, with rhythms of many nations, plays through "Charlie," giving it a lovably infectious swoon. And like most of Mr. Demme's comic thrillers, among them "Married to the Mob" and "Something Wild," "The Truth About Charlie" ends with a singer delivering a tune to the camera that comments on what we've seen. 

This time it's Mr. Aznavour, who puts us in mind of what the picture could have been. But Ms. Newton does something more: she makes us believe in the future.

The best moment in "Charade," Stanley Donen's jaunty romantic caper starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, was when Hepburn, who was developing a crush on Grant's character, put her finger on the dimple on his chin and said, "How do you shave in there?"

There are no such moments in "The Truth About Charlie," Jonathan Demme's tepid remake of the 1963 classic. At once listless and overheated, giddy and utterly zipless, the current incarnation lacks not just the savoir-faire of its stylish predecessor but also the sex appeal: Mark Wahlberg, who has taken on Grant's role, not only doesn't have a dimple in his chin, he doesn't even look old enough to shave.

This is a big part of why "The Truth About Charlie" doesn't work: Much of the charm of "Charade" was the way Donen played with the age difference between Hepburn and Grant (Grant was never better than when pretending to discourage the affections of some doe-eyed, misguided young woman). Here, Wahlberg and Thandie Newton just seem like a couple of mixed-up kids caught up in a bit of international intrigue in the heart of a rushed, vibrantly polyglot Paris.

Newton plays Hepburn's role of Regina Lampert, the unhappy bride of an art dealer named Charlie Lampert, whom we meet as he's finishing a romantic assignation on a train. Charlie will meet his death on that train, but his demise doesn't send Regina into widow's weeds. She was thinking of divorcing him anyway. Still, Charlie's death puts into motion all manner of strange goings-on: the disappearance of all the Lamperts' belongings, threatening phone calls and messages from a trio of multicultural hooligans, a clandestine meeting with an American operative named Bartholomew (Tim Robbins). The person Regina turns to for solace and protection is Joshua Peters (Wahlberg), an American expatriate who has a knack for showing up in the oddest places at just the right time. The question that propels "The Truth About Charlie" is whether Regina can trust Joshua, when it seems clear that few people she encounters are who they say they are.

Demme and his longtime cinematographer, Tak Fujimoto, try their best to juice up the "Charade" story, using lots of different film stocks and lenses, jump cuts, swirling camera moves and speedy effects to give it an of-the-moment feel. The net result isn't a hip movie as much as a dizzying one: Viewers are cautioned to watch "The Truth About Charlie" only with a healthy dose of Dramamine. Demme does manage to find a side of Paris we rarely see in movies, one infused with myriad cultural rhythms and aromas, and the film's terrific soundtrack echoes that globalized sensibility.

But the rest of the film feels like a jet-lagged retread, albeit one that's occasionally buoyed by some pert performances. Newton is admittedly delightful as the befuddled Regina, and Robbins delivers his best Walter Matthau impersonation in a role that Matthau originated. Good, too, is Christine Boisson as Commandant Dominique, a police official whose interest in Regina may or may not be veering into something more than constabulary.

For the most part, though, "The Truth About Charlie" seems about as pointless as most of these kinds of remakes, and Demme makes some odd missteps for a director of his experience. A goofy tango scene introduces a note of hilarity that seems out of tune with the rest of the movie, and the penultimate standoff features some sloppy continuity with a trickle of blood that keeps changing places on Wahlberg's face.

Although Demme's first reference was Donen, his chief inspirations in "The Truth About Charlie" seem to be Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut -- witness the overused jump cuts and aa brief appearance by Godard muse Anna Karina, as well as Wahlberg's slouchy hat and a cameo by Charles Aznavour. Such inside jokes suggest that "The Truth About Charlie" was a lot of fun to make; unfortunately, they don't translate into a film that's all that much fun to watch.

GRADE: B-
Stanley Donen's 1963 Hitchcockesque thriller-comedy "Charade" was no masterpiece but it's remembered as one of its era's more elegant entertainments chiefly off the potent chemistry and sparkling repartee of its stars, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.

To its credit, Jonathan Demme's remake, "The Truth About Charlie," tries hard to re-create this old-school sophistication, even while he's loaded it with contemporary filmmaking embellishments and otherwise strived to adjust the flow for a modern audience. 

The result has its moments, and it certainly makes the most of its Paris setting, but it doesn't have the star power to sustain its momentum, 

gets bogged down in its plot mechanics, and finally comes across as a fairly weak retooling.

Adhering very closely to Peter Stone's original screenplay, it's the story of a chic but clueless young woman (Thandie Newton) who becomes the center of attention when her husband of three months, the Charlie of the title, is murdered in the opening scene.

Unbeknownst to her, Charlie was a crook who left an illicit fortune somewhere in his effects. The old gang he double-crossed wants it, and so does the U.S. government, the French police and a mysterious fellow (Mark Wahlberg) who comes out of nowhere to help -- and woo -- her.

As this premise sets off a stampede of comic deceptions and manipulations, the movie's bright spot is Newton: She has all the charm, self-effacing wit and dingie sense of helplessness the part requires. In a better movie, this could have been a huge star-making role.

Demme has infused the proceedings with an appealing nostalgia not just for vintage Hollywood comedy but for the Paris of the '60s New Wave, peppering his scenes with the faces of Agnes Varda, Anna Karina and Charles Aznavour (who appears as himself in a fantasy sequence).

But many of his choices seem poor: His heavies are lackluster (the original had James Coburn, Walter Matthau and George Kennedy); what was already a confusing plot line has been made even more labored; and some of the most acerbic dialogue of the Stone script has been eliminated.

And there's no getting around the fact that Wahlberg can't begin to hold up his half of the marquee. A likable-enough actor with a certain aw-shucks appeal, he's just way over his head in a project that asks him to wear the shoes of Cary Grant. 

Oct. 25, 2002 - Salon |  In remaking the beloved 1963 Parisian caper flick "Charade," Jonathan Demme has tried to infuse his version with the music and cinematic style of the 2000s and the spirit of the French new wave. So at the very least "The Truth About Charlie" is fun to watch in a chaotic, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink way. We careen through the streets of Paris while rai and Afro-pop blast on the soundtrack; we keep running into enigmatic women from the glory days of Euro cinema (actress Magali Noël and director Agnès Varda appear in cameos, and one-time Godard leading lady Anna Karina presides over a hilarious tango sequence); we see repeated shots from the POV of a corpse on a slab in the morgue. 

Demme's casting is also highly entertaining, although I wouldn't go so far as to call it successful. This movie's resemblance to its predecessor is pretty vague, but Thandie Newton actually does a better Audrey Hepburn impression than I could have imagined, pixie-ing and moxie-ing her way through the incomprehensible plot in that half-apologetic, half-sardonic fashion. I'm not saying Newton has anywhere near Miss Audrey's inimitable screen charisma, but she's got the button nose and the wasp waist; she can't weigh much more than a wet raincoat. (She's also got the right girls'-education mannerisms. When told that her late husband was an international bad guy with a zillion identities, she responds, "Perhaps I will have that ciggie.") 

As for Mark Wahlberg playing her on-and-off love interest, there's not a lot to say, and the less you think about Cary Grant playing that role in the original "Charade," the better. Wahlberg's French is passable, and his sequence of hats hilarious. The preview audience with which I watched the movie was on the floor over that über-Froggy beret he wears in one scene, and later there's a fedora that makes him look like the kid who got drafted for a small role in a suburban high school production of "Guys and Dolls." 

I'm risking film-critic heresy here, but I can't be the only person who thinks "Charade" is kind of a snooze. Sure, Grant and Hepburn are always easy on the eye and their outfits are great, but the story is limp and unsuspenseful Hitchcock lite, the dialogue is loaded with that not very risqué '60s repartee, and the whole movie basically slides downhill from the awesome credit sequence. (Director Stanley Donen used Hepburn -- and Paris -- a lot better in "Funny Face.") Puffball commercial movies like "Charade" are pretty much why the naturalistic, low-budget French new wave happened in the first place. 

Perhaps that point of view explains why I just sort of went along for the quasi-enjoyable ride in "The Truth About Charlie," crappy and nonsensical as it may be on the whole. Whereas I gather that "Charade"-lovers are likely to be highly exercised. "This was not 'Charade'!" one earnest-looking fellow in a yellow oxford shirt raged at his date on the sidewalk outside the theater. "This was the anti-'Charade'! 'Charade' was carefully constructed, and this was a total, ridiculous mess!" Consider yourselves warned by the earnest guy. 

For one thing, "The Truth About Charlie" violates the nearly irrefutable Rule of Three, which holds that any movie with more than three credited screenwriters is bound to be garbage. (There are four, one of them Demme -- actually five, if you count "Charadee" scripter Peter Stone). In both movies, we start off with a juiced-up plot engine, and you're at least half an hour into Demme's picture before you notice that the wheels are coming off. Cutie-pie Regina Lambert (Newton) is getting ready to dump her mysterious art-dealer husband Charles (Stephen Dillane) when she comes home to find their Paris apartment stripped to the bare walls, Charles gone, and a sexy, rather butch female cop (Christine Boisson) waiting for her. 

Charles is dead, of course, and amid all the excitement Regina doesn't find it weird that an American who calls himself Joshua Peters (Wahlberg), whom she bumped into in the Caribbean, keeps turning up wherever she happens to be. This might be my central problem with both movies, actually: The Hepburn/Newton ingénue has to be a girly little dim bulb who never notices that she's super-double-obviously being followed and set up for something. Into this murk comes a crewcut-sportin' CIA-spook type (Tim Robbins) and an international, multiracial trio of thugs, all of whom evidently wanted something from Regina's defunct hubby and assume she's got it now. 

Robbins goes a bit overboard with his usual shtick, as a white man oozing insincerity as thick as the scum from one of those science-project volcanoes. But as the other actors become increasingly lost in cinematographer Tak Fujimoto's welter of crooked-angle shots, crazy-making extreme-close-up conversations, and digital-video flashback and fantasy sequences, it's nice to feel as though somebody here knows what he's doing. (Boisson, who has the confidence and savoir-faire of a weatherbeaten alleycat, is also terrific.) Wahlberg, who was so essentially likable in "Boogie Nights," "Three Kings" and "The Perfect Storm," has now officially "stretched" to leading-man status with his bland, worried-looking performances here and in "Planet of the Apes." It's time to unstretch. 

Really and truly, there's a lot of fun stuff here. Every time Newton goes outside in some gamine designer outfit, and the camera wanders after her, seemingly conjuring up still-beautiful specters from the cinematic past like Parisian sprites, Demme appears to forget what movie he's working on and starts to remake something good, or at least something odd: "Cleo From 5 to 7" or, possibly, "Diva." Then someone else in the story will die in some half-whimsical fashion, or will reveal that they're a totally different person from what Regina thought, and we remember where we are: a misguided reinvention of a buttoned-down romp. 

Demme has floundered as a filmmaker ever since he got all respectable with the Oscar-pileup "Philadelphia" in 1993, although it might be unmerciful to hold him entirely responsible for the Oprah star vehicle of "Beloved." There's a desperation to "The Truth About Charlie" that suggests he's trying to reclaim all his "Something Wild"-era hip cachet at once by flinging a bunch of film-school tricks at the screen. You're never sure whether he's spoofing the original film relentlessly -- although the ludicrous climactic scene sure looks that way -- or trying to give it a big wet one, the way Steven Soderbergh might in his "Ocean's Eleven" mode. Like the earnest guy said, he's traded the smooth, superficial control of Donen's "Charade" for an experience that's much more anarchic and less predictable. As utterly disastrous movies go, this one's really got something.

When a movie is called "The Truth About Charlie," it's a good bet that both the truth and Charlie will have something slippery about them. 

In this sense, Jonathan Demme's new picture doesn't disappoint. It's lively in other respects too, although there's not much going on beneath its energy-filled surface.

We first meet Charlie in the aftermath of a romantic tryst on a European train. But don't get too attached to him, because he's one of the story's least important characters.

The heroine is his wife, Regina, who lives in Paris and is anything but pleased when her husband's abrupt death makes her the heir to a hidden multimillion-dollar legacy. The problem isn't that she misses her spouse very much – they were married only a few months, and he spent most of that time on the road. It turns out she didn't even know his real name.

What disturbs her is the violent attention she's now attracting from a long list of interested parties, including a French police inspector and a United States' government agent.

Charlie's wealth didn't come from respectable sources, she discovers, and Paris is positively swarming with folks who think they have more right to it than she does. She'd be in a real quandary if she hadn't just met a friendly American who promises to help her sort things out.

He seems reliable – or is he yet another scam artist hoping to grab the loot for himself?

Like its title character, "The Truth About Charlie" has more than one identity. On the most obvious level, it's very much a Demme film, telling a fast-moving story with enough power-packed images and eye-spinning editing to assure you it came from the director of "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Married to the Mob." It's also a remake of "Charade," the Hollywood romp starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. And it's a heartfelt homage to a bygone kind of French filmmaking, full of movie-buff references to Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, who forged a new approach to gangster yarns in '60s classics like "Breathless" and "Shoot the Piano Player."

With all these layers, plus a story with more hidden corners than a crooked Paris alleyway, "The Truth About Charlie" has something for everyone – except moviegoers who enjoy some degree of emotional depth along the way.

Thandie Newton is delicious as Regina, and Mark Wahlberg is deftly ambiguous as her helpful American friend. There's little chemistry between them, though, and the story is so busy springing surprises that it forgets to develop much feeling. You may gasp at sudden revelations and even squirm with suspense from time to time. But there's little chance you'll shed a sentimental tear, and by the second hour you may stop caring what happens as long as Regina comes out OK.

So chalk this razzle-dazzle chase picture up as effective Friday-night entertainment, not the heart-stirring romantic thriller it might have been. That's the real truth about "Charlie."

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Displaying considerable chutzpah merely in choosing to remake as elegant and inimitable an entertainment as "Charade," Jonathan Demme uses the occasion to create his own French New Wave movie in "The Truth About Charlie."

Dazzlingly nimble and light on its feet, this breezy but densely textured love letter to modern, multicultural Paris in the guise of a romantic suspenser returns its director to the vibrant vein of his pre-Oscar work in "Something Wild" and "Married to the Mob." Dramatically speaking, however, there's nothing at stake, so the fact that pic is primarily an exercise in style, no matter how breathless, likely will leave general audiences lukewarm.

Knee-jerk reaction on the part of fans of the 1963 original written by Peter Stone and directed by Stanley Donen (news) will be to scoff at the very idea of trying to replicate the perfection represented by Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Those who can't put this objection aside had probably best stay away, but the problem with the new film rests not with the actors; indeed, it's all but impossible for one's mind to stray to another woman while under the delectable spell of Thandie Newton.

More at issue is the fanciful artificiality of the material, which even 40 years ago seemed like a concoction but one in line with prevailing modes of sophistication and expertly crafted to project the beauty and refinement of its stars. Now, the emphasis on the "game" surrounding uncertain and shifting identities, a hidden stash of illicit cash, repeated "coincidental" encounters and demises, and the attraction between characters who meet under unnaturally trying circumstances makes the picture seem perilously synthetic, a work of virtuoso filmmaking in a vain search for substance.

Of course, no one remembers the plot of "Charade," just the satisfaction of seeing the two stars so ideally matched as characters forced to overcome formidable obstacles en route to a preordained union. It can't be said that a similar sense of devoutly-to-be-wished inevitability surrounds the pairing of Newton and Mark Wahlberg, and Demme reaches very deep into movie lore and his directorial bag of tricks to distract attention from this unavoidable problem.

What results is a whimsical tap dance of a film in which every single shot explodes with visual (and audible) information; pic is virtual festival of bold colors, dynamic movement, evocative locations, memorable faces, flights of fancy, film homages, musical outbursts and moody atmosphere (the action is memorably captured during the gray, rainy Paris of winter months), all cut together by Carol Littleton in the witty, quicksilver manner associated with the New Wave at its best.

How many contemporaneous films made in the last 30 years have featured that old standby of a murder scene on a train? Hardly any, one should think, yet "Charlie" features not one, but two. The first sets everything in motion and causes the victim's stunning young widow, Regina Lambert (Newton), to learn much more about her art dealer husband Charlie (Stephen Dillane) after his death than she knew during their brief marriage.

In the course of the cops' preliminary investigation, headed by seasoned detective Dominique (Christine Boisson), the bewildered Reggie is confronted with the information that Charlie had multiple passports and identities, that he'd liquidated their considerable estate and that he possessed something some other people want very badly.

At a loss, Reggie is aided by a conveniently attentive American, Joshua 
Peters (Wahlberg), with whom she had lightly flirted on a recent beach 
vacation and saw again at the airport. The beret-sporting Joshua is a gent, checking her into a comfortable hotel (the Langlois, no less) but not taking advantage of a lady in such distress.

Still, he must have an ulterior motive, as does U.S. Embassy rep Mr. 
Bartholomew (Tim Robbins) who, in a little homage to "The Third Man," 
takes Reggie up in a Ferris wheel to secretly inform her that Charlie was actually a former government agent who supposedly knew the whereabouts of a missing $6 million. Suspicions that she knows more than she lets on naturally surround Reggie, not only on the part of the flics and Bartholomew, but among a trio of questionable characters who seem to feel entitled to the fortune they think Charlie hid from them. Group is played at a pitch of borderline comic menace by Ted Levine, Lisa Gay Hamilton and Korean star Joong-Hoon Park.

As Reggie tries to collect her wits and plot a strategy to deal with 
everyone who's suddenly so interested in her, Joshua always seems to be in the right place at the right time to help her out. Partly it's because he's understandably falling for her, but the real reason, which Reggie finally realizes, to her dismay, is that Joshua is in cahoots with the mysterious threesome.

The progression of "Charlie" from a cinematic lark into a yarn that becomes pretty knotty takes a good deal of the helium out of it; the sense of strain involved in trying to relate (and, for the audience, to follow) the story accumulates in inverse ratio to how seriously one can take it. Demme amuses himself at the end by putting a cute spin on a John Woo-style Mexican standoff involving many characters, but the twists, lies, betrayals and, uh, charades have piled up so high by this time that there's no sense of genuine peril or engagement in the characters themselves, only in the games and how they're played.

Accruing sense of let's pretend also is stressed by the introduction of 
onscreen musical numbers featuring two French icons strongly linked to the '60s, Charles Aznavour and Anna Karina. Aznavour's music is designed to inject romanticism into the Joshua-Reggie relationship, and does so in a corny sort of way, but Karina's splashy nightclub number, a sort of "Change Partners and Dance" variation called "Charade d'amour," makes little sense in context. Abruptly staged musical sequences were quite common in early New Wave films, but their equivalents don't fit entirely comfortably here.

But even when cracks are appearing in the artifice so busily constructed around her, there's always Newton to watch. Displaying sides to her performance abilities that have never been called upon before, she shows she has everything it takes to be a full-fledged leading lady -- looks, charm, humor, class, vulnerability, the knack of being adorable while acting klutzy or flustered, and the ability to move in a flash from a lightness of touch to utter seriousness. She's terrific.

Opposite her, Wahlberg actually isn't half-bad, but he doesn't seem a proper match. Dressed to look dapper, speaking French (in short doses) quite acceptably and moving with confidence, thesp centrally has the easy task of convincing that his character is falling hard for the woman he's manipulating (in "Charade," it was the other way around). Whether or not one comes to believe that this is actually a good idea for Reggie is another matter altogether, one made problematic via one's opinion of the worthiness of Joshua as well as Wahlberg.

Supporting players are a colorful, lively bunch. In addition to Aznavour and Karina, cast is sprinkled with such other icons of European cinema as Magali Noel and Agnes Varda; end credits even feature a quick shot of Francois Truffaut's grave, in salute to the inspiration provided Demme by "Shoot the Piano Player."

Technically, the film is gorgeous, with sparkling contributions by lenser Tak Fujimoto, production designer Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski, costume designer Catherine Leterrier, composer Rachel Portman, music supervisor Deva Anderson and, above all, Paris itself.

A Universal release presented in association with Mediastream Film of a Clinica Estetico production. Produced by Jonathan Demme, Peter Saraf, Edward Saxon. Executive producer, Ilona Herzberg. Co-producers, Neda Armian, Mishka Cheyko.

Directed by Jonathan Demme. Screenplay, Demme, Steve Schmidt, Peter Joshua, Jessica Bendinger, based on the "Charade" screenplay by Peter Stone. Camera (Deluxe color, Panavision widescreen), Tak Fujimoto; editor, Carol Littleton; music, Rachel Portman; music supervisor, Deva Anderson; production designer, Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski; art directors, Ford Wheeler, Delphine Mabed, Bertrand Clercq-Roques; set decorator, Aline Bonetto; costume designer, Catherine Leterrier; sound (DTS/Dolby Digital), Michel Kharat; supervising sound editor, Ron Bochar; assistant director, Mishka Cheyko; second unit directors, Theodoros Bafaloukos, Peter Kohn; casting, Francoise Combadiere Stern. Reviewed at Universal Studios, Universal City, Oct. 11, 2002.