Strand Releasing's DVD includes an interesting, unusual short film included as a bonus feature, Masha Vasyukova's Woody before Allen (2011).

Alice Ovitz (Alice Taglioni) is an eccentric, single Jewish woman working as a pharmacist at her quaint, family-owned shop. She's an avid movie buff particularly obsessed with the movies of Woody Allen. She talks to a huge poster of Allen she keeps in her bedroom, and he talks back (Allen, uncredited, speaking in English), paraphrasing lines from his films.

Alice is unlucky in love. Years before, her sister, Hélène (Marine Delterme), stole away and married a handsome man, Pierre (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), whom Alice fancied. Innumerable attempts by her family - her retired pharmacist father (Michel Aumont), alcoholic ex-attorney mother (Marie-Christine Adam), as well as Hélène and Pierre - to set Alice up on dates always end disastrously, usually because of Alice's eccentric, contrary nature.

Eventually she finds two suitors: Vincent (Yannick Soulier), a slick, emotionally disengaged Pierre clone; and Victor (Patrick Bruel), a plain-speaking atheist who runs a small electronic security business. Though Victor is introduced as someone who's never seen a single Woody Allen movie in his life, there's no doubt which suitor Alice is going to wind up with.

Paris - Manhattan is a safe, superficial romantic comedy, predictable from start to finish but not unpleasant. The business with Alice talking to a portrait poster of Woody Allen and he answering back has led some reviewers to call this a literal remake of Play It Again, Sam, Allen's 1969 play adapted into a 1972 movie written and starring him (though directed by Herbert Ross). In that story Allen is obsessed with Humphrey Bogart, with whom he has an imaginary friendship. The first third or so of the very short Paris - Manhattan - it's only 77 minutes long - plays a lot like that play/film, but first-time writer-director Lellouche lifts ideas from other Allen pictures.

Much of the story plays like "Alice and Her Sister," with scenes focusing on the family's worry that Pierre might be cheating on the unhappily married Hélène. Like Hannah, the song "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" is prominent. A search for evidence of Pierre's cheating prompts an amateur investigation along the lines of Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery. Also from Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters is the idea of an inseparable but forever-squabbling mother and father (also in Radio Days and other Allen movies), with Alice's mother, like Mia Farrow's in Hannah, an alcoholic in denial.

Lellouche's script also attempts, not very well, for some Allen-esque moments, such as an attempted robbery at the pharmacy where Alice ends up helping the thief escape, even loading him down with DVDs of classic comedies she thinks will turn his life around.

The biggest problem with Paris - Manhattan is the Alice character and the actress playing her. Allen, in his starring films, played a nebbish who nonetheless charmed women with his wit and intelligence. However, he also drove them away with his myriad neuroses. He could be overly controlling (Annie Hall), self-destructive (Manhattan), psychosomatic (Hannah and Her Sisters), and generally insufferable.

Alice, on the other hand, is merely quirky. This quirkiness mostly plays as rebellion against her more conventional bourgeois mother and sister, and lingering resentment toward Hélène for stealing Pierre away. But that doesn't explain her schizophrenic behavior toward others: friendly and generous in some scenes, rude and misanthropic in others. Her eccentricities, ultimately, are just window dressing; there's just not much of a character there.

Alice Taglioni is miscast. The filmmakers try to minimize her sculpted, model-like features and great body by having her dress is frumpy clothes and not having her wear makeup in most scenes, but an old maid she's clearly not, and never convincing as one.

Conversely, Patrick Bruel's Victor is rather intriguing if never fully realized. His forthrightness toward Alice and her family and his perceptiveness about them is refreshing and funny, while veteran actor Michel Aumont is good in every scene he appears as Alice's father.

(Spoilers)

In his dialogues with Alice, Woody Allen paraphrases or quotes directly from his earlier films. In what's not really a surprise (though perfectly timed) Allen, playing himself, turns up in two brief scenes late in the film. This uncredited cameo, happily and unexpectedly, is both very charming and reasonably believable. It almost validates the rest of the picture.

Video & Audio

Filmed for 1.85:1 widescreen and presented in enhanced format, Paris - Manhattan looks and sounds good, up to contemporary standards. The Dolby Digital 5.1 stereo is modest but also fine, with good English subtitles.

Extra Features

The lone supplement is a good one, Woody before Allen (2011), an interesting 13-minute short with director Masha Vasyukova visiting Allen when her city, formerly known as Königsberg, decides to erect a statue honoring the man born Allan Stewart Konigsberg and thus, a namesake. The short offers a historical overview of this historically German city, bombed into near-oblivion by the Allies during World War II, then annexed by the Soviet Union, repopulated with Russians and renamed Kaliningrad. (It's now part of Russia, though completely isolated from the rest of that country, bordered instead by Lithuania, Poland, and the Baltic Sea. Meanwhile, Vasyukova and Allen discuss the latter's genealogy a bit before turning their attention to the various submissions for the proposed statue, which Allen gets to select. It's a pleasant little film, wisely confining itself to the matter at hand, which it documents well.

Parting Thoughts

Far from great but still mildly amusing and definitely worth seeing once if you're a Woody Allen film, Paris - Manhattan is equally mildly Recommended.

Stuart Galbraith IV is the Kyoto-based film historian and publisher-editor of World Cinema Paradise. His credits include film history books, DVD and Blu-ray audio commentaries and special features.