Otar Iosseliani's idiosyncratic French movie Favorites of the Moon is a charming and consistently interesting meditation on the bizarre twists of fate that draws people and possessions together and then apart again. The film could be subtitled "adventures of a 19th-century painting and an 18th-century porcelain dinner service." These objects pass in and out of the hectic, zany, ordinary, depressing and confusing lives of an art dealer, a thief, a chief inspector of police, a gun dealer, an inventor, a beautician, several bums, and a crazy old man. With quaint patience, the director creates a spellbinding drama about the serendipity of life and the evanescence of things.