Starring Alice Taglioni and Patrick Bruel. In French with English subtitles. Rated G.

The heroine of Paris-Manhattan lives in the French capital but dreams of that other place: not the actual city but the movie (and all other movies) by Woody Allen. Despite being gorgeous, model-thin, and the owner of a popular pharmacy, Alice (Alice Taglioni) is on the fast track to spinsterdom. Or so we’re repeatedly told in writer-director Sophie Lellouche’s amateurish, if brief and easy to watch, debut feature.

Our grumpy protagonist has the requisite nutty family, including doting Jewish parents (veterans Michel Aumont and Marie-Christine Adam) and a vivacious older sister (Marine Delterme) who effortlessly steals Alice’s better boyfriends. She has few consolations except from Allen himself, in the form of a life-sized poster that dispenses nuggets of wisdom from his earlier, funnier films. (The slightly inexact quotes could have been recorded by an older-sounding Allen.)

There are plenty of other cinematic references, and the usual tasteful jazz—which doesn’t keep Lellouche from slipping lame fusion filler into her randomly assembled soundtrack. Lots of other things feel haphazard here, from family subplots that go nowhere to the poor staging and clumsy comedy of some “suspenseful” scenes recalling Manhattan Murder Mystery. Worse is the inexplicably sketchy rendering of a purportedly perfect Cole Porter–loving guy (Yannick Soulier) with whom Alice eventually hooks up.

That last bit, presumably, is to distract her from the gruffly charming alarm-systems specialist (singer Patrick Bruel) she keeps bumping into. Alice always blows him off, citing his lack of belief in anything—an odd motif, considering she is the most cynical character.

This narrative disjointedness is off-putting but doesn’t quite ruin the general pleasantness of the Parisian setting, nor some pretty good lines. “Gods can never love you,” Alice is reminded at one point. “They just allow you to love them.” Still, she does get a warming kind of benediction by the end.