Lambert Wilson and Fabrice Luchini bring distinctive elegance and style to this bittersweet two-hander from writer-director Philippe Le Guay about two middle-aged actors guardedly renewing their friendship. It is urbane and watchable, if occasionally flimsy and lightweight, often seeming to bowl aimlessly about, like the two leads on their rickety bicycles.

Luchini (who co-devised the story with Le Guay) plays Serge, a once reasonably successful actor who, embittered by showbiz backstabbing, has quit the stage and now lives alone in a tumbledown house on the remote Île de Ré. His old acquaintance Gauthier (Wilson) is a superstar because of his role on a silly TV soap.

Gauthier shows up at Serge's place unannounced and makes him an extraordinary offer: they will perform on stage together in Molière's Misanthrope, alternating in the star role of Alceste (the grumpy misanthrope himself) and the lesser part of the polite and emollient Philinte.

The effrontery of this plan and its obvious relationship to his own failed career piques Serge, but he says that Gauthier must stay on the island for a week or so, for exploratory rehearsals and sightseeing bike rides while he thinks about it. Serge suspects he is to be made a supporting player in Gauthier's ego trip; Gauthier suspects Serge is petulantly wasting his time – and so their sparky, quarrelsome relationship recommences with romantic interludes involving a local Italian woman, Francesca (Maya Sansa).

It's insubstantial, and its ending is not entirely satisfying, but it's a smart, literate picture that goes down very smoothly.