IT COMES as no surprise to learn that the prolific French writer-director Cédric Klapisch wrote his thesis on Woody Allen.

PARIS ***

Directed by Cédric Klapisch. Starring Juliette Binoche, Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini, Albert Dupontel, François Cluzet, Karin Viard, Gilles Lellouche, Mélanie Laurent, Sabrina Ouazani. Club, IFI Dublin, 130 min

Just as Allen took Manhattan as the title for one of his cinematic valentines to the city where he lives, the new film from Klapisch is named Paris, as he celebrates the French capital and takes us through its most famous landmarks, from the Eiffel Tower to the Moulin Rouge.

The tone is touristy at the outset, as a bland TV presenter, an accordionist playing behind him, declares: "Paris, you have 1,000 faces." The mood alters abruptly when the protagonist Pierre (Romain Duris), a professional dancer who is only 30, is diagnosed with a serious heart condition and informed that he will need a transplant. His sister Elise (Juliette Binoche) is a social worker and single mother who moves into his apartment with her three children to take care of Pierre.

As Klapisch intersects the fates of the diverse characters he has devised, he explores themes that resonate with such familiar Allen preoccupations as life and death, insecurity and psychoanalysis, and relationships between older men and much younger women.

In his sixth film for Klapisch, Duris, who resembles Justin Timberlake with his tight haircut and beard, is the brooding soul of the drama, watching other people enjoying their lives while he fears for his own, and he and Binoche empathically capture the close bond between the two siblings.

That is by some way the most compelling and convincing strand in a film that over-ambitiously embraces more sub-plots than it can handle, leaving several underdeveloped. Klapisch, to his advantage, has assembled a formidable cast, and some have the screen presence to disguise the underwritten nature of their characters.

A prime example is Karin Viard as a bossy boulangerie owner with a racist streak. Another is Fabrice Luchini as Roland, a middle-aged Sorbonne lecturer and historian hired to popularise French history and culture for a TV series.

After he falls for one of his young students (Mélanie Laurent), Roland sends her anonymous text messages extensively quoting Baudelaire. In the screenplay's most unexpected line, Roland has been jiving enthusiastically to Land of 1,000 Dances when he compares Wilson Pickett to Descartes. Only in France - well, in a French movie.