A romantic comedy that hinges on matters of death, persistent coma and life support without resorting to bathos or bad taste must be doing something right. Adapting Marc Levy's novel "If Only It Were True," a work whose merits are of the high-concept sort rather than the literary, screenwriters Peter Tolan and Leslie Dixon and director Mark Waters have made a smart, tenderhearted love story. With nods to Mrs. Muir and her ghost and touches of "Sleeping Beauty," the ultra-romantic premise mixes in modern medical dilemmas with a light hand, never forcing its points about life's random blows and the transcendent power of love.

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