Movies thrive on fresh settings, and Bent Hamer’s movie has one: the world of regulated measurements, where Norway’s national standard kilogram (just over two pounds) is pampered like a Rembrandt.

Guarding the kilo — kept at the Norwegian Institute of Weights & Measures — is Marie (Ane Dahl Torp), a lovely but stern scientist whose tidy world is disarranged when her beloved father (Stein Winge) has a heart attack. After that, sometimes the measurement-philosophy gets a little on-the-nose. But more often this is a gently droll tale, as when attractive Frenchman Pi (Laurent Stocker) hits Marie with a chat-up line: “Do you support washing or not washing the kilo?”

Hamer’s style is what might happen if Ulrich Seidl liked people, with immaculate balance in each shot, but the emotions in focus, as well. “1001 Grams” is wise about both grief and the need for romance.