Grrrrr. Grrrrr. Grrrrr. Grr - oh, hey. No, I'm not mad at you. I was just brooding over irksome French filmmaker Luc Besson. He first gained stateside notice with the 1990 bullet ballet "La Femme Nikita," and since then Besson has orchestrated riveting trainwrecks like "The Professional," "The Fifth Element," and (guilty pleasure alert!) "The Messenger." All are thrillingly violent, all are fever-dream stylish, and all eventually get mired in thick, shameless sap. Now, I secretly like Spielbergian sentimentality as much as the next idiot, but Besson's syrupy inelegance is likely to blame for at least two of my cavities.

I wish I could report that Besson learned to curb those mawkish tendencies for 2005's "Angel-A," his first directorial effort since 1999. Truthfully, "Angel-A" might feature Besson at his gooiest, though this could be because he spent the opening years of our young century at work on a trio of children's books/movies ("Arthur and the Invisibles" came out earlier this year). Yet "Angel-A" follows the typical Besson arc: Before its inevitable surrender to manipulative schmaltz, this gritty mélange of Wenders' "Wings of Desire" and Capra's "It's A Wonderful Life" is a charmingly weird fable, its appeal squarely attributable to the film's lead performances.

You will recognize Jamel Debbouze as the shy clerk from "Amélie," and here he plays André, a rumpled lowlife who owes too much to too many. You probably don't know Rie Rasmussen, but with the face of a young Debbie Harry and infinite limbs that could wrap around a man twice, good luck forgetting her. The willowy Dane plays Angela, who distracts André from his suicide attempt with her own plunge into the Seine and, in proper movie fashion, vows to repay his soggy altruism by helping him right his wrongs.

Even without the handy image of Angela juxtaposed against the statue of La Victoire de Samothrace - or her name, for heaven's sake - it's not difficult to suss out the motives of the chain-smoking hedonist in the teeny black dress. When she's not turning tricks (possibly) or kicking ass (definitely), Angela encourages André to accept and love himself, becoming the redemption we knew she would be the minute he set his great, sad eyes on her. And though the compact and swarthy Debbouze isn't conventional get-the-girl handsome, it's easy to see why Angela might literally fall for the adorable André, as evidenced by the film's climactic scene, a cheesy albeit breathtaking shot showcasing Paris in all of its early-morning glory.

 The wily, alluring Rasmussen is quite the find - she had a bit part in DePalma's 2002 flop "Femme Fatale" - and the camera of Besson's longtime cinematographer Thierry Arbogast spends much time contemplating her staggering beauty (seriously, those gams!). To be fair, though, Arbogast, shooting in radiant monochrome, also ogles familiar locations like the arcade on the Rue de Rivoli and the flying buttresses of Notre Dame with that same lust as Angela and André move about Paris in search of salvation. But as I resume growling over this eternal trajectory of inventive execution tarnished by a simplistic fairytale ending, I long for someone to fall from the sky and save Luc Besson from Hollywood.

He's 72 years old, he's fascinated by quantum physics and astronomy, and he enjoys tinkering with mechanisms to see how they work. He was born Lhamo Thondup, but now they call him His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet. "10 Questions for the Dalai Lama" is part gorgeous travelogue, part useful history lesson, and part enlightening interview with a man who often sounds like Yoda (coincidence?) and is also totally giggly, an inspiring fact in light of the "unthinkable sort of burden" the Dalai Lama has shouldered for nearly 50 years.

After a setup that includes a detailed chronicle of China's merciless occupation of Tibet (apparently the so-called "cultural revolution" entailed the suppression of other cultures), documentarian Rick Ray travels to the Dalai Lama's Northern Indian home in exile for 45 minutes with His Holiness, a man whose position he compares to "the reincarnation of Jesus Christ sitting in the White House." Ray's delivery borders on smug, but the Dalai Lama is an utter sweetheart: charismatic yet humble, stressing the importance of forgiveness and faith, yet willing to engage in dialogue about when to give up the course of nonviolence and when religion is more destructive than healing.

"Angel-A"(R), written and directed by Luc Besson, opens at Little Theatres on Friday, August 10 | "10 Questions for the Dalai Lama"(NR), directed by Rick Ray, opens at Little Theatres on Friday, August 10.