Director: Emmanuel Mouret
Running time: 85 minutes

***

MODERN movie-making is getting so amped up that a night at the cinema can feel more like a celebrity workout video. Even romantic comedies no longer end in a serene dander up the aisle. Instead there are farcical last-minute dashes through crowded cities, and marriage proposals made in strenuously inappropriate places. Even the romantic second fiddle is starting to take on the visceral spirit of Rocky Balboa, instead of gracefully giving way when required, if the punch administered by Kevin McKidd to Patrick Dempsey in Made Of Honor is anything to go by.

Where did all the romance go? What happened to the concept of a date movie, rather than crude spoofs like Date Movie? In other words, what has happened to what should be the warmest and happiest of genres, when even Cameron Diaz and Hugh Grant seem to have lost interest? Most studios release no more than a couple a year, throwing together a star from List A and one from List B, spending as little as possible and seemingly thinking even less about the consequences of making chalk date cheese.

Well away from Hollywood, however, another tradition flourishes – most notably in France – in which characters speak in everyday language rather than punchy one-liners, and the storyline evolves in a way that essays plausibility.

Inspired by the garrulous comedies of Eric Rohmer and Woody Allen, Emmanuel Mouret has produced the featherweight French romantic comedy Change Of Address, in which tongue-tied horn player David (actor/director Mouret) sticks up an "Accommodation Wanted" sign and ends up minutes later in a flatshare with Anne (Frédérique Bel), a flirty, incessantly bouncy blonde who owns a photocopying business and is obsessed with one of her regular customers. Anne has a good heart but also the spirit of a neurotic car alarm which tends to intimidate David; instead he finds a more zen love interest with his serious, introverted student Julia (Fanny Valette) whose mother (Ariane Ascaride) thinks the music lessons will add some cheer to Julia's life.

With help from Anne, who offers her parents' beach house to David for a weekend getaway, it seems his romance with Julia will finally blossom. Just when it seems David might be getting somewhere, the muscularly confident Julien (Dany Brillant) comes to Julia's aid when she's the victim of a bag snatch. He has all the forcefulness that David conspicuously lacks, and ends up spending the night with Julia while David is shunted off to the beach for the evening.

But David and Anne's heart's desire may be closer than they think. Right from the start, the love-struck pair connected over their respective romantic aspirations, yet neither of them realised the bigger truth staring them in the face – they share a lovely apartment in Paris, have a ball eating, listening to music and getting drunk together and yet, even though they end up in bed at one point, they still fail to realise that they are perfect for each other.

Along the way, there are probably more double-entendres about French horns than even Benny Hill would have thought possible, although the film's awkward, slow pacing tends to muffle some of the laughs.

Eventually, however, the picture settles into its own groove as a slightly lopsided comedy of romantic manners with some winning performances. A very slight 85-minute meditation on love, friendship and the romantic clichés that tend to obscure reality, it's no Woody Allen – but then, neither is Woody Allen these days.

• Filmhouse, Edinburgh, from Friday