The most peculiarly noteworthy thing about the picture is Parker's performance. While everyone else in the estimable cast seems so cowed by its Important Content that they just sincerely phone in the stereotypes they're supposed to embody -- James Rebhorn's college president standing in for Not-Particularly-Well-Intentioned-White-Cluelessness, Miranda Richardson lunging away as the Image-Obsessed Organization Gorgon, and so on -- Parker, here thoroughly deglamourized, not a trace of Carrie Bradshaw sticking to her, works through the actor-hobbling text to try and uncover an actual human being. She fails, alas -- she really couldn't not -- but her effort is kind of moving in any event.

It’s not just the fact that French writer/director/actor Emmanuel Mouret casts himself as a hapless, neurotic lover in pretty much all of his films that gets the guy compared to Woody Allen. Mouret -- who, at 38, will be able to credibly cast himself as a hapless, neurotic lover for quite a few years yet -- also has quite a bit of Allen’s storytelling sense. Like Allen’s recent, middling “Melinda and Melinda” and his mid-period classic “Broadway Danny Rose,” Mouret’s “Shall We Kiss?” uses a frame story, first to gin up intrigue, then to attempt tenderly ironic effect. Two strangers (Julie Gayet and Michaël Cohen) meet cute, recognize a mutual attraction, dine and drink charmingly together. The man asks for a goodnight kiss, and the woman demurs. Therein, she tells him, lies a tale of just what catastrophe a putatively innocent kiss can lead to.

And so she lays out the story of Nicolas and Judith, two best friends who belong to others, and that’s okay. Chemist Judith (Virginie Ledoyen) is in a secure and adoring marriage with Claudio (Stefano Accorsi), while the attractive but largely at loose ends Nicolas (Mouret) is more of a serial monogamist. One afternoon -- “it was a Thursday, at 3:33, I think,” Gayet’s character informs us, and it’s this peculiar precision that’s one hallmark of Mouret’s sometimes too-arch approach -- Nicolas, a teacher at a girl’s school, is struck mid-class by the horrifying presentiment that he’s incapable of appreciating physical affection of a particular sort. He ditches class immediately and solicits the services of a prostitute, as is the wont of some French men. But the hooker doesn’t allow kissing, so he goes to Judith to explain his problem. Like the friend she is, she wants to help.

One will here detect shades not only of Allen and Herbert Ross’ “Play It Again, Sam,” but of “When Harry Met Sally”’s constitutional skepticism about the sustainability of platonic friendships between men and women. This film, though, steadfastly refuses to entertain the possibility that Nicolas is even subconsciously using a ploy to get the quite comely Judith -- she is, as we noted above, played by Virginie Ledoyen, and Ms. Ledoyen is looking as ravishing here as she ever has -- into bed with him, instead taking their frustration and confusion over the fact that they end up having the Greatest Sex Ever at face value.

The picture takes a while to work up a head of steam. Mouret has also been compared to Eric Rohmer, and, as is the case with most filmmakers who get compared with Eric Rohmer, it’s more to do with people not really getting Rohmer than any real affinity. Mouret’s mise-en-scène, with its fussy compositions, is practically the inverse of Rohmer’s supple style, and in the film’s first half-hour, the precious visuals, combined with the near non-stop Classical Music’s Greatest Hits on the soundtrack, threaten to suck all the life out of the picture. But as things get more improbable, weird and deadpan, the approach makes more sense. The end result is a pleasing cinematic soufflé -- nothing much new in and of itself, but with some enjoyably tart flavors.

Glenn Kenny is our guest critic for the month of March.

"Goodbye Solo," "Spinning Into Butter" and "Shall We Kiss?" open in limited release on March 27th.

[Additional photo: Virginie Ledoyen, Emmanuel Mouret and Frédérique Bel in "Shall We Kiss?," Music Box Films, 2008]