This introspective film musical from Christophe Honoré (Ma Mère, Dans Paris) is less singin’ in the rain and more singin’ about the rain. Les Chansons d’Amour, with its wistfully tender songs by Alex Beaupain, sings of the endless rain on the streets of tenth arrondissement, and of the sodden hearts of Honoré’s young Parisian lovers.

The upbeat opening chapter of the film deals with a capricious though co-operative ménage a trois between twenty-somethings Ismael (Louis Garrel), Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) and Alice (Clotilde Hesme). This is not a perfect arrangement but for the time being they seem to enjoy the various permutations it offers. ‘I’m the bridge between your two banks/Running from side to side/Climb up, I’ll give you a ride/Trample me and rub my flanks’, sings Ismael – at least as rendered by Ian Burley’s cleverly inventive English subtitles.

But melancholy is never far from the surface. Ismael, regrets the growing distance between him and Julie, jealous of the place Alice has taken in her life; Julie is also increasingly unhappy and secretly wants out. It is a melancholy that soon engulfs not only the threesome but all the characters in the film as when, at Sunday lunch chez Julie’s parents, the entire family ends up singing ‘Il pleut des cordes sur le Génie/De la Place de la Bastille’ (which might be translated as ‘It’s bucketing down on the Genie of the Place de la Bastille).

When tragedy strikes in the form of Julie’s sudden death, the characters are forced to deal with their emptiness and to learn something about themselves. Ismael, for example, uproots himself – he leaves his apartment and confronts his grief nomadically on the streets of the city, before finding some degree of closure in the arms of a young male student. However, it is Julie’s sister, touchingly played by Chiara Mastroianni, who feels the loss most painfully. Her song, the poignant ‘Au Parc du Pépinière’ is the best in the film, and Mastroianni subtly conveys the depth of grief that floods this woman’s empty life. As in Honoré’s previous film, Dans Paris, one wonders if the director is more interested in exploring sibling relationships than amorous ones.

One of the problems with the film is that the characters spend so much time singing in a kind of abstract singer-songwriterly manner that we never really get to know them as characters, and perhaps find it hard to care about them. The songs (think Françoise Hardy meets Rufus Wainwright) are often beautiful, but rather than propel the plot, they stop it dead in its tracks for three minutes at a time. After a while, Louis Garrel wandering around Paris waxing lyrical about ‘les nuages blancs dans le bleu parfait’ like some third-rate Racine serves only to tire. This viewer found himself zoning out when faced with the umpteenth musical weather forecast.

Honoré should no doubt be applauded for trying to adapt the musical genre to his own needs. Anyone repulsed by recent American film musicals, may delight in the understatement and honesty of Les Chansons d’Amour. Indeed it is deeply refreshing to hear vocal performances unadorned by the masturbatory over-vocalisation that passes for singing in the age of Christina Aguillera and High School The Musical. The actors, who perform all their own music, really touch a raw nerve, the roughness at the edges being all part of the charm.

But whether the musical genre itself adapts well to the intimacy of Honoré’s nonchalant, unshowy filmmaking is a matter of opinion. His characters are arguably too small and everyday to withstand being blown up to musical proportions. They don’t fill the songs; they are merely mouthpieces for the songs. The result is a pretty song cycle, and decidedly not a musical drama. Still, that Les Chansons d’Amour feels totally unlike the current vogue for mediocre-to-terrible film adaptations of stage musicals, is in itself is something of a blessing. ‘Oh, What A Beautiful Morning’ it isn’t – but maybe we should be grateful for that.