“Any couple in love should remember that love might not last,” says someone midway through “ Three Friends ,” shrugging off a rebuffed kiss with impressively unruffled Gallic poise. If everyone were so sanguine about such matters, most varieties of love story wouldn’t have reason to exist. Certainly a film like Emmanuel Mouret ‘s chablis-dry romantic comedy, in which consenting adults fret and fritter over semi-consenting adultery, would be far more of a novelty than it is. Drolly unpicking the sexual and emotional entanglements of three Lyon gal pals hovering around 40 — two married, one single, none fulfilled — Mouret’s film won’t strike anyone as fresh, either within his directorial oeuvre or that whole cinematic subgenre dedicated to French philandering, but it’s easy, breezy, pleasingly grownup viewing.

Mouret has been crafting variations on this formula since his debut “Laissons Lucie faire!” in 2000, once venturing into historical cinema with the 2018 period piece “Lady J,” but otherwise adhering to a reliable template for lively contemporary relationship explorations that typically attract top French acting talent. While he’s a mainstay in his home country (2020’s “Love Affair(s)” earned a remarkable 13 César nominations), his work has only intermittently found its way to international art house cinemas. With its Venice competition selection marking Mouret’s first appearance in the top tier of a Big Three festival, “Three Friends” might well enhance his auteur status, though it’s neither stylistically nor thematically a significant departure for him.

The film's influences are clear from the very start: jazz piano, a black screen, and centered white titles in a serif font that strongly resembles Woody Allen's signature Windsor Light Condensed. Allen has borrowed from directors like Rohmer and Truffaut throughout his career, and the French have reciprocated in terms of homage, although not always this transparently. With its circular narrative of affairs and betrayals centered on a close trio of women, punctuated by narration from a secondary male character, the superficial resemblance to “Hannah and Her Sisters” is obvious. However, “superficial” is the key word: Mouret doesn't delve deeply into his characters or their shifting desires, though he does move them around with some flair.

Our self-effacing narrator is Victor (Mouret regular Vincent Macaigne), the unassuming, devoted husband of high-school English teacher Joan (India Hair), who is starting to feel stifled by his unwavering dedication. “Pinpointing the beginning of the story is difficult,” says Victor in voiceover — and similarly, Joan isn't sure exactly when she fell out of love with her sweet, kind, endlessly supportive spouse, but she's certain it's a permanent change of heart. When she admits as much to her colleague and best friend Alice (“Call Your Agent” star Camille Cottin), she expects a shocked response. Instead, Alice casually states that it's perfectly normal to be married but not in love: She's regarded her husband Eric (Grégoire Ludig) with detached affection for years, and that works just fine for her.

Alice says the trick is to make your husband think you're as devotedly enamored with him as he is with you. What she doesn't know is that Eric is engaged in a long-term affair with Alice and Joan's eccentric, unmarried art-teacher friend Rebecca (Sara Forestier), who regularly confides in her friends about her frustrated-mistress woes, just without naming any names. Unable to accept Alice's notion of marital compromise, Joan confesses her feelings to Victor, whose reaction shifts from acceptance — so maturely constructive that it twists into denial — to self-destructive anguish. As Joan tentatively steps away from her marriage, forming a friendship with her new colleague and neighbor Thomas (Damien Bonnard) that teeters on the possibility of something more, Alice impulsively takes a dip in the infidelity pool, only to have her cool emotional composure crack for the first time.

Mouret’s script, co-written with Carmen Leroi, interweaves these subtle threads into a neat depiction of Xennial relationship dynamics — at least among the specific urban-bourgeois subset that these films tend to revolve around, with their comfortable knitwear, art house cinema dates, and spacious homes haphazardly filled with books. No subplot leads to anything particularly surprising, though there is some witty, honest observation along the way regarding the hypocrisy that often comes with loosened marital restrictions — Eric might be comfortable having an affair, but he's unnerved by the thought of either his wife or his mistress not being exclusive. Moralizing is scarce, though some characters ultimately come to the conclusion that home is where the heart is after all.

What's missing is the close-up character detail that, as in Allen's best work, would elevate this lighthearted piece from amusing to moving, though all the actors elegantly hit their comic marks — with Macaigne even landing an early blow to the heart with his poignant, gradually crumbling realization that his marriage is over through no fault of his own. “Three Friends” is sparing with such intensity: Mouret's direction is brisk and efficient, with little expressive flair in Laurent Desmet's soft, slightly washed-out lensing or Benjamin Esdraffo's delicate keys-and-strings score, amply filled out with familiar classical pieces by Mozart, Ravel, Mendelssohn, and more. Sometimes, as Allen noted in “Annie Hall’s” oft-repeated shark metaphor, it's enough to keep things steadily moving, and that applies to relationships and filmmaking alike.