You make even Hall & Oates sound good.

A girl too wary of commitment meets a boy too given to believing that true love conquers all in Marc Webb’s bittersweet Los Angeles-set 2009 romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer.

Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, young royalty of indie cinema, play the couple in question, who meet while working for a greeting card company. The buoyant film shifts back-and-forth to different moments of their tortured 500-day relationship. Deschanel is Summer, wry to the core and phobic about being someone’s girlfriend. Gordon-Levitt is Tom, a lapsed architecture student too in love with Summer to see dark clouds gathering. Because their relationship is presented non-chronologically, a scene  in which they watch The Graduate together doesn’t deliver its full emotional impact until later on. That passage feels as mysterious and painful as falling out of love.

The inventive script from Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber is too busy and restless for its own good at times, but it is full of personality and warmth. For every voiceover or quirky touch that isn’t necessary, there are impromptu joyous scenes, like the dance sequence to a Hall & Oates tune that works wonderfully. The film may not make your dreams come true, but it feels true.