It’s a big night. All of Paris is glued to the French Cup final between Olympique Paris et Perros-Guirec, but hapless Grégoire Moulin couldn’t care less. He’s abhorred football ever since his parents killed each other in the course of a vicious argument about his prospects on the pitch. Besides, tonight he’s in possession of a wallet belonging to a comely co-worker; in an uncharacteristic act of assertion, he’ll use it as a ploy to meet her. All he has to do is rendezvous at a café where his bookish potential paramour awaits while losing herself in Flaubertian flights of fancy.

But nothing is ever easy for Grégoire. What should be a simple jaunt becomes a harum-scarum gallop through murky arrondissements as he evades the clutches of the gendarmerie, some soccer thugs, a rabid cabbie, a suicidal nymphomaniac, Hitler, Mussolini, and the amorous advances of a bisexual surgeon. He finally does arrive at the café. What happens next I’d rather not say.

Director/star/co-screenwriter Artus de Penguern has fashioned a sprawling, hilarious, and very French comedy of errors that — what with its stylized Paris, its idiosyncratic humor, its captivation with coincidence, and its conviction that love will out — owes much to its cash-cow compatriot Amélie. But whereas that film was pure whimsy, Penguern’s is shot through with a heavy doses of depraved black humor. Let’s see how much this one grosses. In French with English subtitles. (90 minutes)