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Shall We Kiss?

• Written and directed by Emmanuel Mouret
• Starring Michael Cohen, Julie Gayet, Emmanuel Mouret and Virginie Ledoyen
• Classification: 14A

‘You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss,” go the lyrics to As Time Goes By , the theme song to Hollywood's most famous romance, Casablanca . Not so fast, counters the French film Shall We Kiss?, from director-writer Emmanuel Mouret, in a pair of interlocking stories that suggests that a smooch on the bouche may lead to bigger consequences than catching a cold.

Mouret, who is often compared to Woody Allen, has a similar unadorned shooting style, an emphasis on dialogue, and interest in schemes that go astray. The movie begins casually on a street corner in the French city of Nantes. Emilie (Julie Gayet), a fashionable young fabric designer from Paris, asks a man, Gabriel (Michaël Cohen), if he can tell her where to get a taxi back to her hotel. He offers her a lift in his van and she accepts. The ride turns into a dinner. They acknowledge an attraction to each other but admit that they have partners at home. As they go to say goodbye, he asks for one farewell kiss but she refuses. The reason, she says, would take too long to tell, but he insists on hearing. Dinner leads to drinks as Emilie tells her tale.

Her story is about Nicolas (played by writer-director Emmanuel Mouret), a high-school teacher, who is best friends with Judith (Virginie Ledoyen), a married science researcher. Nicolas and Judith have known each other since childhood and when her husband works weekends, they drink, jog, smoke and share confidences together.

One afternoon after work, he admits that he is craving “physical affection.” A prostitute, she suggests? Tried it, he says, but the woman didn't allow kissing, which spoiled it for him.

They drink and talk some more and think about what to do. Perhaps she, in the interests of friendship, might help him out? The consequences turn out to be analogous to the domino theory in politics; one barrier topples, and soon everything falls apart.

Shall We Kiss? is one of those French films involving a lot of talk and titillation. There is frequent use of a food metaphor – a delicacy, bon-bon or soufflé – to suggest lightness and disposability. Along with the endless chat about relationships, such a movie is an opportunity to ogle attractive people, while listening to a classical soundtrack.

As reserved, rational and scientific as Judith and Nicolas try to be, they cannot turn down the heat again. Even when Nicolas finds another woman, Caline (Frédérique Bel), and moves in with her, it doesn't help. Eventually, Nicolas and Judith decide they have to accept that they are destined to be together, but Judith is worried about hurting her husband, Claudio, and hatches a plan she thinks will spare his feelings.

Once the film focuses on Claudio, who is a more attractive person than either Judith or Nicolas, the film begins to emerge as a drama with some emotional bite, but by then, it's too late.

For most of its running time, Shall We Kiss? plays out like a deadpan, slowed-down bedroom farce – at best, mildly diverting and at worst, inane. Perhaps the film's biggest weakness is that all the characters are so naive and petty you can't really work up much fervour about who sleeps with whom. That would never be a question in a movie like Casablanca .