As long as the French make movies, it seems, there will always be those goofy but satisfying farces that make us laugh despite our better judgment. It's not just the mounting absurdity of the situations that cause the giggles. It's the way the characters are so perfectly oblivious to it -- and determined to succeed. And there seems to be no acknowledgment of the changing times or zeitgeists around them. They aren't so much timeless as time-challenged.

Such is the warm, silly feeling of " Priceless ," in which the irrepressibly effervescent Audrey Tautou (remember her in "Amelie" and "Dirty Pretty Things"?) plays a modern courtesan. Moving from sugar daddy to sugar daddy, her existence amounts to a barter economy, and the girl likes her clothes and her fancy hotel rooms.

When she mistakes hotel waiter Jean (Gad Elmaleh) for another wealthy prospect, we're off and away on a continuing Gallic farce of misunderstandings. She thinks he's royalty. He's so flattered by her attention, he pretends she's right -- while also trying to fulfill his declasse obligations as a waiter. But this also means our impoverished Jean has to keep the demoiselle in the lifestyle to which she is accustomed.

Tautou is a delight, as always, using her bubbly personality to comic advantage. And Elmaleh makes for a sort of poor man's Buster Keaton, perpetually stressed but refusing to surrender, no matter how much damage he sustains to himself or his wallet. The routines may have been done a thousand times, but somehow they seem funny all over again. And it doesn't hurt to have the French Riviera as a backdrop to enjoy.

-- Desson Thomson (April 4, 2008)

Contains sexual content, including nudity. In French with subtitles.