Julie Gayet as Émilie and Michaël Cohen as Gabriel in Shall We Kiss? Apparently they do.

Pascal Chantier

Dangerous liaisons with good intentions: the matchmaking games in Emmanuel Mouret’s romantic comedy Shall We Kiss? may backfire, but nobody is seriously hurt. The players in this mouth-watering Gallic soufflé are so attractive, well-mannered and comfortably grounded in the bourgeois world that you needn’t fear for their well-being, minor heartaches notwithstanding.

Concocted by Mouret, who likes to appear in his own films (he suggests Woody Allen as a lost puppy), Shall We Kiss? could have come only from France, a country whose movies would have you believe that most people over 16 are well-dressed, cultured and sophisticated without being jaded. These are the same young people who have flocked to Eric Rohmer’s movies since the 1970s. But Shall We Kiss? doesn’t have the underlying moral gravity of a Rohmer film.

It begins in Nantes with a chance meeting of two beautiful strangers: Gabriel (Michael Cohen), a local furniture restorer, and Emilie (Julie Gayet), a fabric designer in town on a brief business trip from Paris. He offers her a ride to her destination, which leads to a romantic dinner, at the end of which hovers a delicious question: whether to seal their enchanted evening with a farewell kiss or to leave each other wondering, what if?

Emilie, who is happily partnered but tempted, balks and begins to tell the cautionary tale of two acquaintances, Judith (Virginie Ledoyen) and Nicolas (Mouret), that makes up the heart of this movie-within-a- movie. Best friends since high school who have always confided their deepest secrets, Nicolas, a math teacher, and Judith, a laboratory researcher, act like grownup children when they’re together.

The relationship reaches a crossroads when Nicolas, in despair for lack of physical intimacy since a recent breakup, entreats Judith, who lives comfortably with Claudio (Stefano Accorsi), a pharmacist, to bring him back to life by being his sexual surrogate.

Concerned and devoted pal that she is, Judith agrees — after he reports that even a visit to a prostitute didn’t help, because the date fizzled when the woman refused to kiss. The friends’ first tentative touching of lips recalls the moment in a science fiction movie when a male earthling bestows a kiss on a beautiful, mystified alien and awakens strange sensations.

Choreographed to Tchaikovsky ballet music, Nicolas’ rescue plan unfolds as a deadpan farce, with each hesitant caress and careful removal of a garment preceded by a polite request, as if the couple were following the rules in a college manual on politically correct dating behavior.

Even after Nicolas develops a live-in relationship with Caline (Frédérique Bel), a flight attendant, the affair continues. Once Judith and Nicolas agree that, yes, they are in love, they decide that they must shed their partners in the most humane way possible.

The solution to everybody’s problems, they conclude, would be for Caline and Claudio to fall in love. Claudio’s passion for the music of Schubert plays a major role in their meet-cute scheme, which of course disastrously misfires.

Shall We Kiss? doesn’t pretend that any of these shenanigans are less than preposterous. It has the formality of a modern bedroom farce, without slammed doors or raised voices or people running frantically in and out of closets. Now and again, the movie returns to Gabriel and Emilie, who have come to her hotel room in the early hours of morning.

Will they surrender to a wordless embrace that might or might not change their lives? Or is the story of Nicolas and Judith sufficient warning to keep them at arm’s length? I’m not telling.

****Shall We Kiss?

Starring: Virginie Ledoyen, Emmanuel Mouret, Julie Gayet, Michael Cohën, Frédérique Bel, Stefano Accorsi. In French, with English subtitles.

Rated: Not rated, contains adult themes.