Available on DVD: “The Fairy”

One’s enjoyment of The Fairy depends a lot on knowing why it’s worth seeing. It’s a comedy with two or three big laughs, but it’s not side-splitting. Nor does it have a particularly compelling story. Its appeal is rather in watching people who have devised their own original style of comic performance and have taken it to a rare level of refinement.

The romance of a hotel clerk (Dominique Abel) and a mental patient (Fiona Gordon) — she thinks she is a fairy who can grant wishes — becomes the clothesline for a series of methodically planned and meticulously executed comic bits. Abel and Gordon, who also wrote and directed the picture (along with Bruno Romy), have their antecedents in American silent film and Jacques Tati’s comedy, but they’ve come up with something that is very much their own thing.

They look alike. Abel was born in Belgium, and Gordon was born in Australia, but they look like brother and sister, with rangy dancers’ bodies and faces that have just a touch of Dr. Seuss in them. Their comedy has a presentational feel about it, almost like vaudeville, with hints of the circus, dance and Cirque du Soleil. There are elements of absurdity and of identification with the outsiders of the world, but with none of the sentimentality that usually goes with those qualities.

These people do not go for the tear and the smile. They go for the smile. You’ll find in The Fairy neither the steampunk art direction nor the forced and syrupy zaniness of a lesser Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie (Micmacs, Delicatessen). Abel and Gordon engage the mind, they surprise and they impress. It’s all very confident and expert. They know they don’t have to do anything but what they do, and the viewer will respond.

You might not love it; it might not be your thing, but you’ll come away with no doubt that these people have this thing honed. Seeing Abel and Gordon is like finally seeing the real version of something you’ve previously only seen imitated. They are as in control of the comic tone as they are of their movements — and they move beautifully.