When I first saw the trailer for Francois Ozon’s latest film I laughed out loud at the seemingly preposterous premise. An ordinary couple have a baby that sprouts wings and flies around their living room – and seemingly this was meant to be a serious drama. As with his previous films such as Swimming Pool and Under The Sand, however, things are never so clear cut and the lines between fantasy and reality in Ricky quickly become blurred, both for Ozon’s characters and his audience.

It all starts off innocently enough. Single mother Katie (Alexandra Lamy) lives in a dilapidated council estate with her seven-year old daughter, Lisa (Melusine Mayance). Katie works at a nearby chemical factory and begins a relationship with a new Spanish co-worker, Paco (Sergi Lopez), and before long they are living together and Katie is pregnant.

Ozon keeps their domestic situation modest but pleasant enough, although he doesn’t sugarcoat the labours of parenting. We see the whole family contest with incessant crying and snoring from young Ricky, deal with shit-filled diapers as well as delight in the miracle of creation. However, when bruises on Ricky’s back appear during Paco’s watch, Katie immediately assumes the worst and, in response, Paco walks out on them. The bruises worsen until bizarre appendages break through the skin, eventually evolving into wings.

‘He looks like an angel,’ Lisa comments, only for her mum to vocalise what most of the audience are thinking: ‘More like a chicken.’ It’s an interesting moment as Ozon pre-empts and consciously dispels any religious analogies audiences may wish to apply. It is also noteworthy that Ricky’s wings are brown, rather than the more classically angelic white. Katie is understandably anxious to keep Ricky’s additional appendages a secret, but after they are unequivocally exposed to a supermarket full of onlookers, the family are forced to make some tough choices about Ricky’s future.

The film is underscored by a crushing sense of foreboding and impending doom thanks to its opening scene, in which Katie tearfully requests for her baby to be taken into care. She claims her husband has deserted her and she can no longer support her two children. It is a bizarre, yet unfulfilled piece of tragic prophesy as the film immediately flashes back ‘several months’, and the narrative subsequently never catches up to this moment. The film ends pointing towards a very different fate for our principals, a fate that would dramatically alter the tone of the film’s conclusion, were it not for this opening sequence.

The cast do a fine job. Sergi López couldn’t be further removed from his fearsome role in Pan’s Labyrinth. Paco is, for the most part, an honest, easy-going guy who wants to do the right thing. So it is interesting to see how his character handles the stress, especially given the information that he will abandon his new family before we have even met him. Alexandra Lamy also does a great job as Katie. She exposes her flaws but remains sympathetic, even when she struggles to hold onto what it is she really wants.

The two youngsters do well too. Melusine Mayance as the now almost clichéd wise-beyond-her-years Lisa is arguably a more competent parent than either Katie or Paco, while still vulnerable to a normal child’s lapses in judgement. But kudos must also go to Arthur Peyret, the baby playing Ricky, or rather to Ozon, the parents, wranglers, trainers or handlers that between them clapped and cooed off-camera to coax such a wide-ranging and effective performance from the perpetually drooling infant.

There are suggestions that Ricky’s very existence is a figment of his sister’s imagination, as part of some wish-fulfilment fantasy to be part of a real family again. It is Lisa who chooses to name her newborn brother Ricky and, although Paco claims it is a more suitable name for a cartoon character, Lisa wins out. Ricky subsequently grows from something resembling a Sunday roast to an almost God-like figure who, at one point, pulls such a commanding hero-pose that I half-expected Patrick Stewart to wheel into frame and recruit him for the X-Men.

The message of the film seems to be a cautionary one: parenthood is not to be taken lightly and a baby is not a quick fix for either a troubled relationship or to fill an emotional void. It’s tiring, stressful and relentlessly demanding, especially when the baby is of the freaky flying variety. James Marsh