The cartoonish caper of “The Falling Star,” the latest semi-silent slapstick farce by the troupe led by Euro clowns Abel & Gordon, won’t be to every taste. Truth be told, it took me a good long while to get on its wavelength and in tune with its low-stakes silliness.

But when the best physical shtick starts to pile up in the third act, when an assassin takes his best shots with a prostethic arm that has a mind of its own, when one and all in this ID-switch caper comedy join in a deftly/daftly choreographed line dance to the music of Link Wray, this Tarantino-as-vamped-by-Jacques-Tati won me over.

The filmmakers/mimes behind “Lost in Paris” and “Rumba” go for a kind of Twee Tarantino here, dropping us into a world of crime gone to seed, where the aged criminals only have to worry about a last try at covering their tracks for their long-ago crimes.

Boris (co-writer/director Dominique Abel) is the 60something ex-crook, now co-owner of The Falling Star bar in Brussels. His partner in crime and life Kayoko (Kaori Ito) runs it with him, and the former and current “muscle” of the gang, hulking Tim (Philippe Martz) acts as doorman, but still has the duties of “fixer” when things go south.

Which they do. A one-armed stranger (Bruno Romy) with a grudge and a pistol shows up gunning for Boris. His misbehaving shooting arm causes the pistol to misfire (the arm is blown off), saving Boris.

But as the shootist dashes off to the hospital (Belgium has one of the great tax-funded healthcare-for-all systems in Europe) where his arm is re-attached, shadow-play-with-sound-effects style, Dom & Co. scramble to make the gang leader safe from further attempts, and from discovery by the authorities.

There’s nothing for it but to kidnap hapless, sad and semi-retired Dom (Abel again), who lives in an old bridge tender house and spends all of his lonely time drinking, feeding his Australian shepherd and visiting the cemetery.

” I don’t want to be him,” Dom gripes (in French with English subtitles).

“HE doesn’t want to be him,” Tim points out.

But slipping Dom a mickey, dyeing his hair and giving him a mustache may not be enough to throw the assassin and the cops off the scent. Dom’s estranged wife Fiona (co-writer/director Fiona Gordon) is a private eye. And her latest missing dog case gets back-burnered as the man being passed off as her “husband” doesn’t know who she or their dog Suzanne is.

Fiona will don disguises to follow Tim and hunt for clues that lead her to Kayoko and the flat above The Falling Star. Kayoko will engage in elaborate dances to manhandle, undress and dress doped Dom, whom she finds she might prefer as a “partner.”

Dom will be convinced his name is “Boris” as he’s been hired to bartend at The Falling Star, and “all our bartenders are named Boris.”

Characters will weep, and find elaborate ways to mime sharing a tissue under a bathroom stall wall. Staging the “suicide” of the assassin is going to be tricky with that damned mind-of-its-own arm. The tranquility of the cemetery will be disturbed by Tim’s Dom-grabbing tactics, Fiona’s weeping as the cemetery cop who marches his rounds blowing a whistle at any and all who get out of line.

Not that he stops and confronts them. He just whistles and keeps his stride.

Dom will experience a paranoid dark night of the soul, imagining the bent pole chair he’s slipped out of as the prison bars that face him.

Brussels tumbles into strikes and marches, whimsically created by casting a crowd to run in place.

And everything resolves in a jukebox musical number by all the Star drinkers and employees, jamming to vintage Link Wray guitar rock in the coolest choreography since “Pulp Fiction.”

The acting is mostly wordless, smile-free deadpan here, with scowling Boris-as-Dom revolting against playing Monopoly with one of his alter ego’s old friends (Bruce Ellison) as part of his “cover.”

He won’t finish this “capitalist” indoctrination game!

It’s all entirely too dry in the early acts, when we’re meant to buy into this cutesie retro “modern” world of vintage cars and flip phones and old crimes by leftist criminals.

But when Abel & Gordon and their accomplices find their excuses to play to their strengths — slapstick dance, mimed mayhem and the like, “The Falling Star” stops falling and failing. And if we don’t fall in love with it, we kind of grin and fall in “like” before all is (un)said and done.

Rating: unrated, comic violence, comic come-ons

Cast: Philippe Martz, Kaori Ito, Dominique Abel, Bruno Romy, Bruce Ellison, Céline Laurentie and Fiona Gordon

Credits: Scripted and directed by Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel. A Kino Lorber release.

Running time: 1:37