The poignant, startling French film 'The Father of My Children' opens with a whoosh of activity. A financially struggling independent-movie producer, Gregoire Canvel (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), is driving through Paris, trying to keep the different parts of his life in play. He's talking -- he's always talking -- taking one call after another with a cellphone cradled under an ear. But what he's really doing is juggling, a tricky proposition, given that he's holding a cigarette in one hand, carelessly tending to the wheel with the other hand, while a stream of bad news from his creditors and various projects pours into his ear like poison. Casually handsome and invariably dressed in a suit, though without the tie that might cut off his circulation, Gregoire looks every inch the bourgeois-bohemian businessman. He's a moviemaker, and, as such, an apparent breed apart. The truth is, however, that while he keeps company with art, his truer mistress is money: He's millions in debt, and the banks and the tax collectors are coming down hard. As he drives on, still juggling, an assistant warns him about a director who is fast helping lead the company into ruin. 'Gregoire, if you allow it, there are no limits,' she says, adding that they need to get the director's budget under control. 'He's bleeding us dry.' What no one knows is that Gregoire has almost bled out. Mia Hansen-Love, the writer and director of 'The Father of My Children,' based this charismatic, charming man on the well-regarded French producer Humbert Balsan, who abruptly died in 2005. Born into wealth, he started as an actor, appearing as an Arthurian knight in Robert Bresson's 'Lancelot of the Lake' (1974), before moving increasingly behind the camera. He continued to take minor roles, but his life's pursuit and passion became nurturing films without obvious commercial prospects. They might make it onto the festival circuit -- he produced titles by Lars von Trier and Claire Denis, who seem to be represented in this film though not named -- but rarely beyond. He was evidently interested in producing Hansen-Love's first feature, 'All Is Forgiven,' but instead became the touching subject of her second. A captivating if elusive subject, as it emerges. Although inspired by Balsan, 'The Father of My Children' isn't a documentary and so, rather than attempt to excavate the mystery of another human being, Hansen-Love gently digs along the fictionalized margins. She drops us into Gregoire's life midswirl, letting us catch up to speed with the realistic dialogue that imparts information rather than explanations. Initially, it's all we can do to keep pace with him as he races from foe to friend, trying to appease a difficult director in Sweden who is the presumed proxy for the Danish von Trier ('He's a psychopath,' someone says), and joking with a husky, diminutive French filmmaker who appears to be a stand-in for Denis. Gregoire is preoccupied with work and the fast-approaching financial disaster, a calamity that Hansen-Love makes palpable by beginning and ending many of her shots of him in hurried motion. (You intuit that he's trying to outrun something; later you realize that that something is his life.) Yet even as Gregoire remains fixed on his troubles, Hansen-Love's attention remains divided between him and his small family, the camera continually returning to his three daughters and wife (Chiara Caselli), who are always waiting for him to come home, get off the phone, be here now. The depth of his love for them is never in doubt. But when he compliments his oldest, Clemence (Alice de Lencquesaing), on her earrings, she has to remind him that he bought them. (The de Lencquesaings are father and daughter in real life.) 'The Father of My Children' is a tale of cinema, a story about the agonies of trying to work outside the cinematic mainstream (even in France!). Yet what makes the movie so affecting is that it's also a love story about a family. Throughout the film, acquaintances and advisers urge Gregoire to sell his film catalog to save his company. He refuses, insisting that if he does, there will be nothing left. Of course he's wrong, as Hansen-Love's repeated and heartfelt images of his daughters and wife forcefully insist. For the film's first hour, Gregoire, who's made expressively real by de Lencquesaing's understated magnetism, fills the story with excitement. And then he just disappears, a formally bold move that might have emptied out the film if Hansen-Love hadn't already filled it with such feeling. PRODUCTION NOTES: 'THE FATHER OF MY CHILDREN' Opens on Friday in new York and Chicago. Written and directed by Mia Hansen-Love; director of photography, Pascal Auffray; edited by Marion Monnier; costumes by Bethsabee Dreyfus; produced by Philippe Martin, David Thion and Oliver Damian; released by IFC Films. In Manhattan at the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. This film is not rated. With: Chiara Caselli (Sylvia), Louis-do de Lencquesaing (Gregoire), Alice de Lencquesaing (Clemence), Alice Gautier (Valentine), Manelle Driss (Billie), Eric Elmosnino (Serge), Sandrine Dumas (Valerie) and Dominique Frot (Berenice). 