Those who adored Amélie ought to get on well with Danièle Thompson's Parisian romantic comedy.
Cécile de France plays a waitress from the provinces who eavesdrops on denizens of the Champs-Elysées area and gets taken up by one of them.
Her beau (Christopher Thompson) is a scholarly author who has discovered with some shock that an ex-lover is now the mistress of his father (Claude Brasseur), a veteran art collector about to sell his priceless collection.
The most entertaining character in the film, however, is not France's winsomely inquisitive young girl but Valérie Lemercier's bitchy soap star, now playing in a Feydeau farce and trying to attract the attention of Sydney Pollack's American director in order to play Simone de Beauvoir in one of his movies.
Albert Dupontel is good, too, as a celebrated concert pianist who wants to bring his music to ordinary people rather than the stuffed shirts who go to classical concerts.
Orchestra Seats has style but many clichéd moments. It feels like a Gallic version of a Richard Curtis film.
It is entertaining, but beady-eyed in its efforts to please audiences attracted to the idea of an old-fashioned Gay Paree.
Orchestra Seats (Fauteuils D'Orchestre)
Cert: 12A
