Paris in the spring. A beautiful, brilliant, American student named Lauren meets and falls in love with Daniel, who is French and as brilliant as Lauren. They both read [Martin] Heidegger and share a fondness for American films, especially those, like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Sting," that were directed by George Roy Hill. Though they act as if they were sophisticated, they are naïve at heart. When Daniel takes Lauren to see her first porn film, she runs out in tears. She hadn't expected it to be "like that." "That," says Daniel, "isn't love."…

Lauren and Daniel are, I think, meant to be comic and appealing in their mixture of innocence and worldliness. Yet Mr. Hill's "A Little Romance" … recalls most vividly the arch manner in which the Our Gang comedies worked—by having their child actors ape not the behavior of children...