As a genre, the rom-com has all but died — what's a woman to do when at the end of a long working week she sits down in a theater hoping for solace and a thin but meaningful sliver of real romance and all that happens on-screen is a lot of preachy, self-helpy schlock? To all rom-com filmmakers — please understand that most women don't want to be told what to do in a relationship, they want to be cajoled into admitting what they want and then to sit back and let the guys do all the work. Is that so much to ask? Oh well.

Fortunately for us, a few poignant love stories are still being made. They're not easy to find, and it's always a surprise to encounter one (like coming upon a butterfly in the midst of heavy traffic). "(500) Days of Summer" is one such sighting. Delicately hued, subtle and nuanced, it's easy to forgive the occasional lapse into whimsy (like the parentheses in the title) to concentrate instead on the originality of its storytelling and the awkward, endearing soulfulness of the characters. Director Marc Webb used to make music-videos before launching into this, his first feature — and he seems extremely attuned to the heavens and hells and purgatories of love, its many shades and textures. Perhaps it's because he's used to thinking in lyrics or random lines of poetry, rather than rushing headlong into the banalities of a foregone conclusion.

And banal is the one thing "(500) Days of Summer" is not. It avoids the predicament like the bubonic plague. Like the titular character Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel), the film would rather DIE than do anything as ordinary as say, go out for burgers in a T-shirt and jeans. Summer is unfailingly, romantically attired: mod-girl dresses offsetting her slim figure and glossy bangs, she prefers pancakes to bagels, but only when she feels like eating at all. When Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) sees her walk into his office (he works for a greeting card company) as his boss' new assistant, he's immediately intrigued. And it doesn't take long before he falls deeply, irrevocably, into the marshland of love.