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With his third feature, rising Romanian director Paul Negoescu reaches back to a time when Woody Allen’s name was associated with intelligent romantic comedies and jazz, delivering a film drenched in Allen-esque situations replanted in Bucharest. That in itself is fine, yet while “The Story of a Summer Lover” is intended as an homage to those classic films, down to the use of music and specific urban settings, Negoescu lacks the ability to make his schlubby characters interesting.

Instead, this overly chatty story of a math professor who finds more satisfaction sleeping with nubile students than with his girlfriend merely hauls out yet another bunch of unexceptional navel-gazing characters whose physical and intellectual attractions will escape most audiences’ comprehension. It’s good to see Romanian cinema continuing to diversify, but this isn’t quite the thinking man’s comedy it very much wants to be.

The triumvirate of friends...

Paul Negoescu realized he hit the jackpot with “Two Lottery Tickets,” the low-budget comedy he shot for around €30,000 which – to the surprise of everyone, including the director himself – would become the top-grossing Romanian film of 2016, raking in €540,000 at the box office.

But for a helmer whose first feature, “A Month in Thailand,” screened in the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, a breakout, box-office hit didn’t change expectations for his third movie, “The Story of a Summer Lover,” which world premiered in the Transilvania Intl. Film Festival May 31.

“It’s a different film,” says Negoescu, calling “Summer Lover” a “personal story” that he suspects will appeal to a smaller, niche audience. Modest ambitions aside, the movie is bound to generate buzz off of Negoescu’s earlier successes; even if it can’t match “Lottery’s” big payout, “people will hear about this film, for sure,” he says.

The eponymous...

A look at what's new on DVD this week:

"A Summer in Genoa"

Directed by Michael Winterbottom

Released by Entertainment One

Of the many films Michael Winterbottom ("A Mighty Heart," "9 Songs") has directed in recent years, you wouldn't guess the one starring recent Oscar winner Colin Firth as a father who must take care of his two daughters in the wake of a car accident involving their mother (Hope Davis) would be the one to have trouble making it to the U.S. But here we are three years after "Genova," as it's known in much of the rest of the world, was shot and it's finally arrived on DVD, a mix of supernatural thriller and human drama that's actually getting reasonably good reviews upon its delayed release. Catherine Keener co-stars.

"Belladonna"

Directed by Annika Glac

Released by Osiris

Glac's debut as a writer/director centers on a man whose...