Now out on DVD, The Grocer's Son is a low-key character study with pretty French people cavorting amid pretty scenery. Unfortunately, the character being studied is hardly worth the effort. The title character, Antoine (Nicolas Cazalé), returns to his family's grocery business after a decade in the big city not because his father has been hospitalized and his mother needs his help, but to impress his neighbor Claire (Clotilde Hesme) with a vacation in the country where she can study for her college entrance exams.

Of course, once he starts driving the delivery van along a route people almost entirely with cranky old people, Antoine starts to unwind a little—especially when Claire accompanies him. As he begins to smile and she begins to see what lies beneath his prickly exterior, the biggest surprise in The Grocer's Son is that there is no surprise. The entire movie unfolds exactly how you imagine it would, complete with a father's forgiveness and an arbitrary fight and reconciliation between Antoine and Claire.

At least both actors are gorgeous in an über-Gallic way. Unfortunately, Antoine doesn't call for Cazalé to do much more than glower and occasionally take an awkward stab at forced humor. Hesme, however, proves again after last year's Love Songs that she's seemingly incapable of anything other than sulking or manufactured whimsy. That these two will end up together is a given from the first moments of the film, but why we should care is never explained.