So much of cinema is dominated by super-shiny, cookie-cutter Hollywood types, who have perfect looks, confront textbook problems and resolve them in absurdly clichéd ways.  Case in point, any part Katherine Heigl takes, or any of the cast of the achingly awful He’s Just Not That Into You.  Their on-screen travails bear little resemblance to the reality of us mere mortals.

Yet in trying to counteract that, certain filmmakers bend over backwards to make their characters not impossibly perfect, but improbably imperfect.  The wallflower type will have absolutely no social skills; someone slightly mysterious comes across as physiologically disturbed, while someone who is a little mal-coordinated can’t walk two feet without wreaking havoc.

Reality, most of the time, lies somewhere in-between, and unsurprisingly, it is the indie films that best recognize this.  (500) Days of Summer belongs in this category.  A quirky twist on the done-to-death ‘boy meets girl, cue emotional drama’ plotline, nothing in it is particularly groundbreaking.  Still, it’s a triumph of a film, and not simply because of its off-centre credentials (impeccable as they are).  Inevitably, the film is based on the writers’ own painful experiences of youth – as co-writer Scott Neustadter puts it ‘She was smart.  She was pretty.  She was perfect.  Six months later, she dumped me’. The film comes replete with angsty rock soundtrack and ultra-cool wardrobe.

Like any indie effort worth its Sundance spot, (500) Days of Summer has delusions of grandeur.  The creators call it ‘a Postmodern Love Story’ and have styled their film to within an inch of its life.  Think an ironic Bollywood-esque number when a character lands the girl, or a bittersweet split-screen contrasting reality and expectation when he loses her.  The narrative jumps around in chronology, the cinematography is endlessly contrived; vivid colours at emotional highpoints juxtaposed with grey lighting on a down day.

Some of these are a joy, others, like the philosophical voiceovers at pivotal moments just clutter up the story.  All of them fade against the real genius of the film.

What makes this so darn fantastic is that the characters are so desperately, authentically, tragically awkward.  To explain; they may be a little bit more attractive and with better wardrobes than you or I, but they are emphatically human.  They deal with truly ordinary issues, and endure very real mistakes and successes.

Little of the drama focuses around momentous, transformational or life-affirming events.  Most of the action takes place in a non-descript office or a realistically (for a twenty-something in an average job) cramped apartment.  The one punch thrown barely registers.  The film would almost be dull, were it not for how credibly the scenes have been approached and how true to life so much of the story feels.

Being ‘indie cinema’, the characters had to be quirky, and they are, but not impossibly so.  Summer (Zooey Deschanel) is the whimsical type, but the writers don’t prove this by making her do anything too crazy, like (stereotyping any number of films here) live in an underground bunker or never wear shoes.  She just listens to slightly off-beat music, thinks Ringo was the best Beatle and likes to go shopping in Ikea.  Cooler than most people, but not out of our league.

Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a bit of a romantic sap, letting his emotional guard down too easily.  Again, this is subtly portrayed; he doesn’t hire out a brass band to declare his love, he does what thousands of lovesick shmos have done when the object of their affection is nearby: he gets drunk and does bad karaoke.

If this were a high school film, Summer and Tom clearly wouldn’t have been the prom king and queen type, but neither would have been the class loser.  They’d just be the supporting actors, slightly awkward characters whose relatively average lives wouldn’t normally get a whole storyline.

The genesis of writing duo Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber

The film's writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber

(who featured on Variety magazine’s coveted 10 screenwriters to watch list last year) the former said of the film: ‘[co-writer Michael] Weber and I always dreamed of writing a romantic comedy like our heroes Cameron Crowe and Woody Allen – one that was relatable and identifiable, where the comedy came from a real place rather than some squirrel attack in the woods’.

With (500) Days of Summer they have more than succeeded.  The best moments of the film are the most innocuous: a family looking nauseated by a couples cutesy ‘alone in the universe’ behavior, or Tom’s fleeting look of panic when he bumps into his ex boarding a long-distance train.

Such moments of sheer, unadulterated awkwardness will resonate with anyone who has seen a relationship go down the pan.  As with other great indie flicks, such as The Wackness, or Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, this is a grown-up movie, with believable characters dealing with the invariable trickiness of real life.  Like most films, some parts are stretched, but you never want to throw your popcorn at the screen to protest at the implausibility of the plot.

Sometimes it’s fun to watch the fairytale and see perfect individuals live happily ever after.  This autumn, save your popcorn to see the not-quite-so-perfect people try and work it out.

(500) Days of Summer is released in the UK on 4th September and throughout the rest of Europe before the end of the year.