Directed by Luc Besson. Starring Jamel Debbouze and Rie Rasmussen. In French with English subtitles. Rated PG. Opens Friday, June 8, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

There’s no denying that filmmaker Luc Besson is an odd duck. Besson became a writer-director of popular French features before metamorphosing into the writer-producer-mogul of other people’s movies. He is notorious both for boasting that he rarely reads—although he is the author of four best-selling children’s books—and his claim that the only critics who really matter ?are the kids down at McDonald’s, for whom movies are either chouette (sweet) or de la merde (shit). In line with this logic, Besson habitually deals only with things that interest him on a visceral level (cartoonish thrillers and space operas; underwater flora and fauna; fast cars; supermodels).

In other words, he is about as far removed from the traditional Gallic model of a cinephile as it is possible to get. Nevertheless, based on the evidence provided by Angel-A, this militant anti-intellectual does occasionally go to the movies.

The story begins when André (Jamel Debbouze), an underworld nebbish hopelessly indebted to the mob, interrupts his own suicidal leap into the Seine to save someone else from drowning. Angela, the angel he rescues from the murky waters (Danish fashion plate Rie Rasmussen), is a lot better looking than Clarence, the wingless wonder who rescues James Stewart from a similar fate in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, or even Solveig Dommartin (who played the sexy trapeze artist in Wim Wenders’s The Wings of Desire, Besson’s other obvious source of inspiration). Throw in a snazzy black-and-white scope format, and one soon realizes that one is in the presence of a feature not specifically aimed at habitués of the world’s largest fast-food chain.

The fact that the streets of Paris seem strangely deserted, while its inhabitants are mainly thugs and the patrons and employees of five-star hotels, exacerbates this suspicion. The physical mismatching of the two stars is equally striking: Rasmussen appears to be at least twice as tall as Debbouze, who slouches around like a humourless Lou Costello (as always, hiding his missing right hand).

The fact that Angela can take out four bad guys with a single punch and magically solve financial problems makes this pairing seem even more improbable until we come to realize that even seemingly divine beings can have problems of their own.

Eventually, the sheer strangeness of this ode to love in Paris is not without a certain head-scratching appeal. You might not be able to fathom why Angel-A was made, but you certainly won’t suffer while watching it.