A lot of people love Woody Allen, including me. French director Sophie Lellouche loves him so much that her movie is an undisguised fan letter to the stammering, clarinet-playing, death-fearing filmmaker.
Alice (Alice Taglioni) is a pharmacist from a loving but slightly dysfunctional Jewish family in Paris. Her parents want to marry her off. But Alice found her perfect man years ago, only to have him fall for her sister at first sight. She’s never found another love.
Instead, she moons around mentally conversing with her idol, Allen (voiced by the man himself), and ignoring the burglar-alarm salesman (Patrick Bruel) who’s perfect for her.
It’s a cute variation on “Play It Again, Sam,” where Allen got imaginary love advice from Humphrey Bogart, but the execution is off. Taglioni is a Vogue-cover knockout with cheekbones you could slice cheese on.
A pharmacist who looked like that would have Parisian men queueing up out the door to buy aspirin. Still, she’s appealing, and her gorgeousness could (maybe) work if the script made her seem truly neurotic, instead of blunt and Allen-obsessed. Since when are those two qualities enough to throw a Frenchman off his game?
There’s a good cinephile heart beating under this fluffy story. But Lellouche, in making her homage to Allen, left out one of his essential qualities: bite. “Paris-Manhattan” drifts by and never leaves a single toothmark.