The City of Light provides title, setting, and in a sense story and star for director-writer Cédric Klapisch’s Paris, introduced at last year’s Lincoln Center Rendez-Vous with French Cinema and at one point considered with the subtitle “An Ephemeral Portrait of an Eternal City.” A mosaic of the physical and spiritual capital in monuments and mundane modern constructions, neighborhood streets and shops and markets, it is also as much a pattern of individual lives lived therein, interacting intimately or casually or not at all.

Observing in seasonal changes from a narrow balcony, it is a conglomeration of selected, only somewhat representative -- mostly some level of the middle class -- Parisians, with no hint of urban noise, grime, attitudes and traffic. Even a final, maybe ominous taxi detour on account of a protest demonstration, is occasion for another visual love-tour of the place.

The balcony, and the observing eyes over whose shoulder the camera sees much (but not all), is that of the bachelor-messy flat of Pierre (Romain Duris), a carefree cabaret chorus dancer informed that he must have a heart transplant, the success rate of which is forty percent. Forced not to work while waiting for a coronary match, he has time to think of lapsed relationships, schoolmates, his unaware parents, and mortality.

Forty-something big sister Elise (Juliette Binoche) takes a leave of absence from social services to shore him up by moving into his place with her young daughters and son. A woman who speaks her mind, she has not been lucky or smart in affairs of the heart, either, and lives withdrawn from that old game despite brotherly encouragement, even while she helps him scope out an alluring university student across the street.

That student, Laetitia (Mélania Laurent), also attracts her professor Roland Verneuil (Fabrice Luchini), who sends her anonymous literary-sensual text messages, accepts a high-paying job hosting a television series on Paris history, and has a love-jealousy relationship with his brother Philippe (François Cluzet), a married architect about to experience fatherhood.

Elise jokes with nearby flower and produce vendors, particularly the fishmonger Jean (Albert Dupontel) who is upset about but attached to ex-wife Caroline (Julie Ferrier), a good-natured flirt who continues to work with him at the market. At her job, Elise has interviewed a homeless man who tried to sweet-talk her in the street and a couple from Cameroon bickering over the anticipated illegal arrival of his brother Benoît (Kingsley Kum Abang), who has cellphoned a bikinied Parisian tourist met poolside in Africa. Pierre and Elise become reacquainted with each other and patronize the corner bakery whose snooty racist owner (Karin Viard) reluctantly hires assistant Khadija (Sabrina Ouazani), French-born of North African descent.

The lives and stories touch and separate, a few drawn into greater intimacy while others go their disparate ways. “There are more than ten characters, all of whom are narrators,” some more rounded than others. What to leave in, tweak or edit out is a problem for any such structure of fragments. Architect Philippe’s animated nightmare is jarringly out of place, and there are pieces that ought to have gone into the cutting bin in toto or else been enlarged and integrated, i.e., Khadija at the bakery and hospital, the Cameroonians in Africa and France, Pierre’s old interest in Diane (Olivia Bonamy) and his set-up lovemaking with Rachel (Nelly Antignac).

Paris, however, works its spell, in perceptions heightened for anyone suddenly made aware of mortality and thus intent on what was formerly taken for granted. Klapisch’s “network of interconnections [may] go in all directions [and] not be linear,” but most parts bear on one another, and then there are the more subtle, moving cross-references. There is the staid professor dancing with youthful abandon for what must be temporary reprieve, and there is the restrained mother of three bump-and-grinding to remove her sneakers in emotional happiness. 

(Released by IFC Films and rated "R" for language and some sexual references.)