(500) Days of Summer

There’s charming freshness in nearly every aspect of this beguilingly offbeat romantic comedy. Wry, nuanced performances from Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt stand out in particular, he as the genuinely love-lorn Tom, she as the elusive and enigmatic Summer of the title. The witty, playfully inventive script (by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber) is a winning mixture of smart and funny, and first-time director Marc Webb stages the action with a stylish skill that sustains the production’s visual and emotional coherence amid the story’s fractured chronology. The narrative begins at the end of the sweetly tumultuous romance between Tom and Summer, then flashes back through assorted stages of the relationship. The pointedly scrambled chronology of the flashbacks (designated onscreen by day-numbers recorded by Tom in his retrospective account) makes enough emotional sense to carry the film into unexpected complexities with character and story alike, and to protect it against the occasional hiccup of indie-style cuteness. Pageant Theatre and Paradise Cinema 7. Rated PG-13