With a title like this, you know you’re going to be getting more than meets the eye. In fact, a modest title is a surefire way of piquing interest by suggesting that the film is aware of the norms and far from comfortable about the need to conform to them. But I was not prepared for how exciting, absorbing and utterly original Just Another Love Story would be.

The film opens with ‘Love scene No. 1′, a man lying on his back in the rain. His blood washes across the cold stone as he narrates his own situation as if it were a perfect archetype of the opening to a romance film. ‘Love scene No. 2′ shows a revolver pointed at a man’s head as he declares his love for an invisible woman. She is the one holding the revolver. He moves it to his heart. The gun fires. The scene ends. ‘Love scene No. 3′ shows a fraught woman driving along at speed. She is talking hurriedly n the telephone until suddenly she crashes, and the car tumbles, and tumbles, and tumbles for what seems like forever, until it stops, and so does she.

As if this opening, pulsating with an energy many directors would kill for and infused with a self-awareness that’s so difficult to achieve without seeming smug or awkward, isn’t enough the scenes that follow begin to tie them together with noir plot to die for. Through a series of unfortunate events and misunderstandings, married man Jonas winds up pretending to be the lover of a blinded woman who has lost her memory. He steadily falls deeper and deeper in love with the world inhabited by the mysterious woman, and keeping up his real life and his fantasy becomes more and more untenable.

To make matters more confusing, a mysterious man has appeared on the scene and appears to be stalking Jonas. Luckily his day job is a forensic photographer for the police, so his colleague Frank can help him investigate. Of course, this doesn’t mean the conclusion to Frank’s investigations will be pleasant. In fact, quite the opposite. And as the plot delves deeper into the dark twists and turns of this warped love story it drags us ever nearer to a dramatic climax that will have you on the edge of your seat.

There are several major selling points to this film. One is it’s playfully reflexive attitude to its own plot, which sees Jonas constantly narrating his own situation, and various cliched elements parodied as part of a playful nod to the noir origins of the film. This playfulness is enhanced by Jonas’s bizarre colleagues Frank and Paul whose black humour embellishes every element of the story in a way that’s as crucial to the feel of the film as the plastic couple on top of a wedding cake. The visuals are also stunning. Aside from the beautiful shots of Angkor Wat that occasionally appear to contrast the dull greys of the city, there are some wonderful editing techniques that allow memories and experiences to overlap in the most intriguing ways. Making the whole film feel like a stream of consciousness, a fluid, natural progressing that pulls you along with it.

It’s an artful and innovative film that’s as watchable as any focus-group made-to-measure movie but as intelligent as many an indecipherable arthouse tome. I can’t think of higher praise than that.