THERE is a disease called WoodyAllenitis. (It is something Woody Allen seems to have shaken off).

Symptoms include the wearing of thick black glasses, self-conscious neurotic dialogue with issues such as hypochondria, vexation and relationship angst. In Julie Delpy's debut film . . . the French actress not only writes and directs but stars too . . . it is hard to tell who is worse afflicted. Is it Delpy's 35year-old Marion, an eccentric, frizzy-haired Parisian photographer who wears those black specs? Or is it her boyfriend Jack (Adam Goldberg), her US boyfriend who is over-anxious and prone to over-analyzing things?

Perhaps it is the director herself, who unashamedly casts this affectionate, often hilarious fishout-of-water romantic comedy in the mould of Allen's Annie Hall.

Delpy, in that other-worldly accent of hers, narrates the story.

But the problem of her authorial voice is compounded also by the film's many similarities to her work with Richard Linklater on Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, both zeitgeist-fuelled, talky, philosophical riffs about the trouble of life and relationships.

Amidst all this, Delpy does eventually find herself . . . even if she goes to great lengths to disguise her beauty by looking as ugly as possible. Look at my film instead of me, she seems to be asking of us.

Marion and Jack live in New York, but they are passing through Paris for two days, staying in the apartment above Marion's nutty parents. Her dad (Albert Delpy . . . Julie's real-life father) is an American-hating artist with a penchant for phallic art; her mum tells Jack she slept with Jim Morrison. Everywhere they go, they bump into one of Marion's ex-boyfriends. It doesn't help that Jack doesn't speak French and he soon becomes deeply paranoid: was Marion some sort of slut he wonders? And why are there dirty texts in her phone from an ex-boyfriend? Are the French all perverts? Delpy has a knack for the situational gag and builds up a mountain of comic cross-cultural confusion.

It is clearly influenced by 'quirky' US indie films. But while many of these films use quirkiness to divert our gaze from sentimentality and pedestrian observations about life, Delpy does have something genuine and interesting to say. She demonstrates that getting to truly know somebody is hard and sometimes you just have to make a leap of faith. She doesn't plumb for slush or the obvious resolution . . . which is always good in my book.