This bittersweet love story is an impressive debut for its codirector and writer Yolande Moreau, a popular stage and television comedienne in France and her native Belgium who is best known to American audiences for her role as the brokenhearted concierge in the 2001 French hit Amélie. Moreau also stars as Irène, a fortysomething comedienne traveling through the north of France with her one-woman show. While on tour, Irène meets Dries, a youngish vagabond who becomes smitten with her and her show. Despite regular cell phone reminders that she has a husband and child waiting at home, Irène is nonetheless charmed by the attention of her ardent admirer. And so Irène allows her young suitor to slowly find his way into her middle-aged heart. The craggy-faced Wim Willaert brings such genuine affability and tenderness to his role as Dries that one can understand why this man is hard for Irène to resist. And Moreau plays her with an endearing mixture of worldliness, vulnerability, and melancholy. These two beguiling performances make the romance that develops all the more poignant, for one can't help but feel that Irène's initial fear of the giddy acceptance of love is in part due to her awareness that, as the title suggests, the tide must eventually go back out.