‘Thomas in Love,’ With a Computer for Company

“Thomas In Love” is different with a difference. This unusual little film goes its own way not to be seen as edgy, trendy or on the cusp of fashion but to a specific dramatic purpose, to better tell its adventurous story.

Even the way that narrative develops is apart from the norm. “Thomas in Love,” which won a major critics award at the Venice Film Festival, starts gently, with amusing drollness, then gets more serious, even provocative, without sacrificing its light touch. This is very much a film with something on its mind.

The debut feature of director Pierre-Paul Renders, “Thomas in Love” is also very much a Belgian film. Though that country’s output is not enormous, works like “Ma Vie en Rose,” “Toto the Hero” and “The Carriers Are Waiting” are united by their wry, sly, darkly playful sensibility.

Set in an indeterminate near future, “Thomas” opens in a unabashedly flamboyant way. Practically exploding onto the screen is Thomas Thomas’ (for that is the character’s full name) favorite computer-generated virtual sex partner, the lovely and complaisant Clara, very much an X-rated Lara Croft.

Thomas (Benoit Verhaert), it turns out, does more than make frequent use of Clara’s services; he lives his entire life through his video screen, which also functions as a “visiophone,” allowing him to see the people he talks to. A 33-year-old acute agoraphobe, Thomas can’t stand human contact. It’s been eight years since he’s left his house, eight years since he’s let anyone in. If he wants to talk to his psychiatrist, his robot vacuum cleaner repairman or even his mother, he does it through the visiophone.

It is the conceit of Philippe Blasband’s intriguing screenplay that the audience sees on the big screen only what Thomas sees on his screen; we watch his world, in effect, along with him. Though we know his age and hear that he’s good-looking, the only thing we never get to see is Thomas himself.

The visual technique that makes this possible, usually called subjective or first-person camerawork, is not new and has not always worked well. In fact, when Raymond Chandler saw its most famous example, 1946’s “The Lady in the Lake,” based on his novel, he called it “a cheap Hollywood trick.”

There is nothing, however, of the gimmick about that point of view this time around. “Thomas” gives us a superb sense of what its namesake’s circumscribed life is like, as well as what a world where that kind of interface is the norm (a world unnervingly close to our own) would consist of.

Because the title here is not “Thomas Alone” but “Thomas in Love,” it’s no jolt when circumstances force Thomas into at least making the attempt at a connection with two very different women, each of whom challenges him in disparate ways. Even the most tentative of human relationships, it seems, bring their complications with them.

Thomas’ psychiatrist, sensing that he needs to have his life shaken up, enrolls him against his will in a video dating service called Catch a Heart. Here he meets the cheerful, unfazed Melodie (Magali Pinglaut), a gamine goofball who is devoted to all manner of New Age-ish trends (sweating clubs, color exchange tribes) but has a wacky, optimistic quality that is so opposite to Thomas’ that he finds himself intrigued.

Almost simultaneously, Tho-mas’ insurance company suggests he make use of his eligibility for a government-licensed prostitution program that services the disabled. Soon these women, too, are regularly popping up on his screen, and Thomas finds himself drawn to Eva (Aylin Yay), at least in part because she’s also a formidably unhappy person whose determination to be left alone strikes a chord with him.

The actresses who play Melodie and Eva have very different but equally striking, emotionally laden faces that easily hold our attention. Also helping the film’s verisimilitude is director Renders’ decision to shoot each of his actors alone in a room, as their characters are, with only a small video camera and a picture of the person they’re talking to for company. If this is our future, we do not have a lot to look forward to.

Unrated. Times guidelines: explicit computer-generated virtual sex.

‘Thomas in Love’

Benoit Verhaert: Thomas

Aylin Yay: Eva

Magali Pinglaut: Melodie

Micheline Hardy: Thomas’ mother

Alexandre von Sivers: Insurance agent

Frederic Topart: Psychologist

In association with RTBF, an Entre Chien & Loup/JBA production, released by IFC Films. Director Pierre-Paul Renders. Producer Diana Elbaum. Screenplay Philippe Blasband. Cinematographer Virginie Saint Martin. Editor Ewin Ryckaert. Costumes Anne Fournier. Music Igor Sterpin. Production design Pierre Gerbaux. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

Exclusively at the Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West L.A., (310) 478-6379.