‘DARLING, untie Mummy,” is a phrase no child should ever have to hear.

One night, “Victor,” one of those big-eyed, watchful beans French cinema mass-produces, has enough of witnessing Mom and Dad playing B&D games. The parents pay for his presence; Victor (Jeremy Chaix) would prefer normal allowance.

Maman is so clueless that, when Victor runs away, she tearfully tells her husband, “We never hurt him.”

Well, Oprah would beg to differ. In America, forcing your kids to observe your kinky sex acts would make juicy afternoon TV.

In the hands of French filmmaker Sandrine Veysset (“Will It Snow For Christmas”), the twisted tale becomes one of those tender, trivial miniatures which is more precious than cupcakes in the snow.

Victor – in smart-child, stupid-choices mode – lands with a sympathetic hooker.

Triche (Lydia Andrei) is the classic baguette: crusty on the outside, soft within. A working girl in the tradition of Fellini’s Cabiria – maternal, straightforward, striving for a life of middle-class respectability – Triche shares parent issues with Victor.

Her father fingered her sister and herself. Veysset’s visually poetic, dramatically static drama labors this hard-edged material in pursuit of an ending as sentimental as “Stepmom.”

Can Victor and Triche overcome their scarred pasts to create a nurturing alternative family? Despite one character’s dire warning that “it will all end in tears,” the movie ends with snowflakes and smiles and a silly song about “cupcakes of love.”

“Victor” is Exhibit “A” for why the French film industry is stalled on the international market. VICTORStarring Lydia Andrei and Jeremy Chaix. Written and directed by Sandrine Veysset. Running time: 88 minutes. Not rated. In French with English subtitles. At the Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St., today at 6 p.m.