Shall We Kiss?

The movie begins in Nantes, where a chance encounter between a Parisian fabric designer (Julie Gayet) and a local art restorer (Michaël Cohen) leads to dinner, drinks and nearly to the titular meeting of the lips. But wait, the woman says - first, she must tell a cautionary tale about how a similarly innocent smooch created seismic shifts in the relationships of two other couples. That story then plays out in flashback, with the hangdog Mouret perfectly self-cast as a lovelorn schoolteacher who falls for his best female friend (Virginie Ledoyen), no matter that she's happily married and he's dating a beautiful stewardess (played by ebulliently ditsy Frédérique Bel). I'll say no more about how it all ends up, except that Mouret marries Rohmer's visual lucidity and love of smart dialogue to the sort of screwball-comedy antics that wouldn't have seemed out of place in the films of Lubitsch or Hawks, and he does it all with a beguiling lightness of touch. (KinoSmith)