Alice (Ariane Labed) is a merchant sailor and the replacement second mechanic on board a creaking, leaking vessel called Fidelio. That rather loaded name may well be a maritime joke, as Alice goes on the pull with her male colleagues whenever the ship berths. She has, accordingly, a nice land-lubbing chap (Danielsen Lie) at home and a boy in every port. What happens at sea and all that.

There is, however, a complication. The captain of the Fidelio is her first love and the ship is awfully confined.

There are many commendable things about Lucie Borleteau’s debut feature. The screenplay – co-written by Clara Bourreau, Mathilde Boisseleau and the director – wisely avoids trumpeting the heroine’s gender: there are no “woman in a man’s world” speeches and no eyebrows are raised regarding Alice’s sexual appetite. Interestingly, when one colleague does creep, unwanted, into her room one night, the threat that she’ll tell other women in the merchant navy sends him scuttling.

Labed, who first came to prominence in Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg (2010), brings a cheeky charm to the central role. But even with framing extracts from the diary of the late mechanic whom Alice replaces, Fidelio always feels a little stranded and pregnant with metaphor: it's a voyage, see? On a vessel, see? All that's missing is a rabbit hole.

There is, too, the same irony that attends all voyage-based films. On celluloid, voyages have nowhere to go: they’re either vessel-bound or all left-foot, right-foot, unless the journey is beset with obstacles. And Alice’s journey, compared to say, Frodo’s, is rather uneventful.

An impressive first film, nonetheless.