Currently available on DVD: "Let It Rain"

The pleasing diversion Let It Rain begins in the rain and ends with a reminder that with some things, you must simply let them unfold the way they're going to unfold. It's a good approach to take with the film itself.

The generalities cluttering up our notion of contemporary French cinema, middlebrow division, are much like the ones afflicting any other nation's cinema. Yet this generality I believe to be true: One of the reasons Let It Rain (Parlez-Moi de la Pluie) works is that the actors rarely indicate, externally, whether something's supposed to crack us up or not. The French know how to lay into a souffle without a heavy hand, and a comedy doesn't require strain or undue emphasis.

The film is the third feature of writer-director-actress Agnes Jaoui, after The Taste of Others (2000) and Look at Me (2004). As with her earlier films, this one's an ensemble piece of domestic crises and tangled emotions and no small amount of affection. Jaoui portrays Agathe, a well-known feminist writer and fledgling politician who has decided to run for an election in the south of France, near her sister's home. The recent death of their mother shadows the sisters' present unease.

The film, however, begins with the introduction of hotel clerk Karim (Jamel Debbouze, a shrewd comedian and actor) and self-styled journalist Michel (co-writer Jean-Pierre Bacri). These two have plans to produce a TV documentary project about "successful women." Agathe, whose family's longtime housekeeper is Karim's mother (Mimouna Hadji), appears to be the perfect interview subject.

The interview sessions are all disastrous in one way or another; Let It Rain is at its wittiest when Michel flails around, grousing about his own divorce and child custody troubles without ever quite asking his interview subject an actual question.

Affairs are conducted on the sly; flirtations such as the one between the married Karim and his fellow hotel worker (Florence Loiret-Caille) perfume the air with possibility.

Jaoui's directorial style isn't stylish, but it is relaxed, forthright and effective. She is married to co-writer and actor Bacri, who's wonderfully droll; their work together on all three features has been fruitful, and The Taste of Others is worth seeing simply for the way Bacri, whose arched eyebrows are the devil's own, handles an English lesson with an actress with whom he's fallen in lust.

This film is frothier than Look at Me, which took its cue from a genuinely troubled and troubling young protagonist trying to find herself amid her arrogant father's distracted celebrity. Let It Rain takes it easy on everyone, clucks, deceivers and all. It's slight. But the way Jaoui, Debbouze and Bacri set the ensemble tone at the top, the playing style is low-key, effortless and, when called for, moving. No major chords here; the grace notes are enough.