If you want to whet your appetite for a visit to the Paris of your dreams, you'll probably get more out of Avenue Montaigne than you will from most travel brochures. The movie takes place in a version of Paris where every conversation in every cafe looks intriguing and where just about everyone shares in the city's sophisticated elegance.

Avenue Montaigne centers on Jessica (Cecile De France), a young woman who arrives in Paris and lands a job at a cafe, the hub around which the rest of the story revolves.

Director Danièle Thompson stirs the film's ingredients as gingerly as possible, and although many of the movie's characters are dissatisfied for one reason or another, the movie's tone remains reasonably buoyant.

Through the spirited Jessica, we meet a popular soap-opera actress who'd love to break out of her mold, a pianist (Albert Dupontel) who's disgusted with the trappings of the concert world, an art collector (Claude Brasseur) who's trying to sell his amazing collection, and his son (Christopher Thompson).

At some point in the proceedings, you may wonder what Sydney Pollack, a prominent American director, is doing in the film. Cast according to type, Pollack plays a prominent American movie director who's making a film about Simone De Beauvoir, longtime lover of existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

Don't let such names throw you; Avenue Montaigne hardly qualifies as thematically weighty. It's one of those Parisian baubles in which almost nothing has the power to burst anyone's bubble.

The movie includes an appearance by Suzanne Flon, who died shortly after the film was completed. Flon plays Jessica's grandmother, a woman who instructs her granddaughter about how to live around opulence without actually being wealthy. Grandma worked around luxury.

Avenue Montaigne allows us a bit of vicarious enjoyment, as well. It's one of those "what's-not-to-like" movies, a fantasy about life and Paris that passes painlessly, a trifle elevated by its Parisian settings and our desire to lose ourselves in them.

Avenue Montaigne

Crisscrossing lives in Paris.

• Grade: B

• Rated: PG-13

• Running time: 100 minutes