I'd heard differing opinions of a slightly different version that played at Cannes in 2001, but I was unprepared for a film so tender, so densely detailed, so erotic. Jeremy Davies plays Paul Ballard, a young man in 1969 Paris, working as film editor on "Dragonfly," a glossy, "Barbarella"-like science fiction bon-bon set in the distant future of 2001 (it includes Cuban revolutionaries giving chase in a snowfall on the moon). Ballard has an Air France hostess girlfriend (Elodie Bouchez) who he can't quite engage with, even while making a "David Holzmann's Diary"-style navel-gazing vérité doc about his aspirations. When the director of the film is fired, Paul eventually takes charge, trying to mesh all the elements of his life into an honorable entertainment.

Coppola, at 37, does justice to the romantic yearnings of the 27-year-old Godard. "CQ" is a delirious pastiche. Yet, it has such heart. Coppola has worked as a director of videos and commercials, and as a producer on a number of pictures, including his sister Sofia's "The Virgin Suicides." Like her remarkable film, "CQ" boasts a tactile, frame-by-frame sensuality and curiosity about the physical world and the realm of romance that is, in a word, simply sweet.

While the film brims with cool décor and things to look at, it never feels off-puttingly hip. The story is set in a particular era of filmmaking, but at heart, Paul is a shy boy who wants to express himself. While he could be called a passive character, Davies embodies him as a true observer, a sallow, callow, lanky, melancholy boy with permanent bedhead and an endlessly abashed smile. His quiet, breathy performance is highlighted by his first moment as a director, leaning toward his actress, saying with aching quiet, "If I'm doing anything wrong, will you tell me?" as if he were the most compassionate of lovers as well as an attentive artist.

While it may sound like the ultimate boy-film-student wet dream, the film requires no glossary of film history. ("You need to conceal things," someone counsels within the film, "so they make us feel something.") There is, however, a shot of a shiny perfect Eclair 16 in a wooden crate that is matched by the brimming happiness that creeps across Davies' face. Coppola grins when I bring up that scene. "That sensual beauty, it's kind of a guy thing," he says, "That kind of mechanical device and all that it represents, to have your own [tools]. It meant a lot to me, and they were able to find a pristine camera. So sexy."

Angela Lindvall is seen as the picture-perfect secret agent named Dragonfly; meeting her at a dubbing session, as the actress Valentine, she's calmer, quieter, a ringer for another 1960s icon: freckled muse-to-art Jane Birkin. (Coppola concedes he kept a photo of Birkin nearby as he wrote.) Paul watches, rapt, as Valentine repeats the lines to her image on screen: "I love you... I love you... I love you so much." Godard used similar tricks in "Masculin Feminin," jump-cutting, in love with girlish softness and intractability, the kind of formative life force you cannot avert your eyes from.

There's physicality to spare, down to film stock whispering over an editor's fingertips, and an attention to beautiful bare feet. Coppola shrugs. "There's something sexy about feet. It's something instinctive, something very sensual about that. In Paul's movie, you see it in black and white, [his girlfriend's] feet, [with the actress at the end, even though it's in long shot] she's barefoot. There's something very sexy about that."

"It's all in the details, as they say," a character says. I'm dying to see "CQ" again, where not a scrap of décor goes wrong and an elegant structure resists easy summary. An elaborate series of musical motifs (mostly from the French group Mellow), visual detail and themes of doubling unfold in your memory. (Coppola used the great Dean Tavoularis, one of his father's constant collaborators, as his production designer, as well as "The Royal Tenenbaum"'s cinematographer, Robert Yeoman.) "CQ" is more speed-of-consciousness than stream-of-consciousness, with its sleek transitions among Paul's states of mind.

Coppola's 1969 setting places it not just in Paris, post-May 1968, and the French ferment in movies and politics, but also the time when the likes of his father, George Lucas and Philip Kaufman were poised to change the world. One set of private jokes highlights this link: "CQ" opens with an American Zoetrope logo that had been used only once before, at the start of the company's first production, Lucas' "THX-1138," and concludes with the present-day Zoetrope logo, accompanied by one last Morse Code message: a dedication to his dad.

"It took four of five years just fantasizing," Coppola admits. "I would file things away that would impress me." It's a labor of love without being labored. He admits to notable influences. "I'm a big fan of '8 1/2.' It's embarrassing. I really revere that movie. 'Stardust Memories' I get a kick out of. 'All That Jazz' is a personal favorite. All these movies are these mature artists looking back on their lives, analyzing things, considering where they went right, went wrong."

But those are post-middle-aged guys, exploring their impotence in the face of life, art, death. "Exactly. I thought it would be fun to flip it around, oh, it's a young guy feeling impotent, not quite sure where he fits in, what's his voice. Then he projects into the future, he fantasizes, he reaches out, trying to connect, that was the initial concept. It took four of five years, some wrong turns. When I wrote the script, it came very quickly, a couple of weeks." And dear reader, it only takes ninety minutes of your time.

"CQ" opens May 31 at Pipers Alley.

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