It may be a cliche, but there are few more “liberating” images in the cinema than having your heroine toss aside convention and decorum and dunk her head in the public village fountain in some eternally sunny corner of Provence.

When the woman doing the dunking is a shy, unhappy and more-uptight-than-average Swede, more the better.

That’s a payoff moment in “Je M’appelle Agneta,” an ever-so-slight, not really “funny” midlife crisis rom-com.

A repressed, depressed, newly-laid off empty-nest Swedish mom pops down to Provence to cure what ails her in this Swedish version of “It’s My Turn,” “Eat Pray Love,” “How Stella GotHher Groove Back” or “Under Tuscan Sun.”

The film is as predictable as a Swiss watch and as adventurous as a romance novel or its Hallmark Channel equivalent. But it’s set in Provence, so there’s that.

Eva Melander has the title role, that of a dowdy 50ish mom whose kids have reached an age where they only make contact if they want money and whose husband (Björn Kjellman) has become an exercise freak who always exercises with a cute younger neighbor.

She’s just lost her job and resents “my whole life of useless labor” (in Swedish or dubbed into English) as she ties one on and voice-over narrates her frustrations to the world.

Agneta is a serious Francophile. She adores, she narrates, all things French. But as she’s had a few, that narration is what she’s putting in an application for a job she’s seen in a classified ad.

An “au pair” is needed to “look after an older Swedish boy who needs help.” In small-town Provence. Cleaning and cooking are required. As is accompanying this “older boy” to the bar every Friday afternoon.

Sounds like heaven. Her husband laughs it off. Maybe he’s not having an affair with his exercise partner, but he’s a big source of Agenta’s oppresion. She won’t make it a week away from home, he scoffs. She LOVES France, but never tried to learn the language?

That criticism is what puts her on the next trains south.

Pan-Europeanism aside, there may have been some language barrier issues with that ad. Meeting the swarthy restaurateur who placed it, Fabian (Jérémie Covillault) underscores how out of her depth Agneta is. There are no English speakers in town, much less Swedish.

Except, that is, for the “Swedish” “boy” the ad speaks of. Einar (Claes Månsson) is an ever-shirtless bon vivant of advanced years. A Swedish expat, he lives in a former monastery, and has since the days when being gay could be illegal or called for “a cure,” thanks to the social mores of the ’60s.

He awakens each day with a shout at the sun. “Good morning, my libido!” Just the thing a menopausal mom from Volvoland wants to hear.

Einar doesn’t “need help,” he insists. And as he complains about her (Swedish) cooking and presence, he adds bits of judgemental interrogation that drive this aged gay blade to his own conclusion.

“Apparently, I’m not the one who needs ‘help.'”

What Agneta needs is a good “molting,” shedding her feathers and her Swedish obsession about “what others think of you.” Before you know it, she’s cooking French, standing up for herself, submitting to an undergarment makeover by the town’s aged undies seamstresss (Anne-Marie Ponsot), meddling in Einar’s estrangement from a relative, dunking her head in that fountain and entertaining thoughts of leaving her husband.

Unsurprising cinema like this adaptation of Emma Hamberg’s bestseller plays as comfort food to fans, and Melander and Månsson don’t make bad company in their performances. They’re just not novel enough to be surprising or particularly funny.

“Je M’appelle Agneta” takes us to Provence and lets us see that transformative dunk in the fountain. But it can’t make us feel it.

Rating: TV-MA, sex, nudity, smoking

Cast: Eva Melander, Claes Månsson, Jérémie Covillault,
Anne-Marie Ponsot and
Björn Kjellman

Credits: Directed by Johanna Runevad, scripted by Isabel Nyland, Emma Hamberg and Johanna Runevad, based on a novel by Emma Hamberg.

Running time: 1:53