There’s a lovely moment toward the three-fourths-mark of “Revoir Paris,” the new film by Alice Winocour, in which two women are alone in the the Musée de l’Orangerie standing in front of — or, rather, encompassed by — the museum’s famed water lily murals by Claude Monet. 

The aging Impressionist donated the work to the state of France in response to the devastations occasioned by World War I. “The illusion of an endless whole, of water without horizon and without shore” was Monet’s attempt to offer some measure of solace to a shattered world.

Mia (Virginie Efira) and Félicia (Nastya Golubeva Carax) are companions linked by a terrible event. On the way home from dinner with her longtime partner Vincent (Grégoire Colin), Mia stops at a bistro to take cover from a thunderstorm. It’s the same restaurant where Mia’s parents are out for a night out on the town.

Gunfire erupts. A cadre of men — or is it only one man? — navigate between the tables and booths shooting anyone showing signs of life. Mia is laid out on the floor, alternately playing dead and crawling through the rubble. She survives the attack.  Félicia’s parents are not so fortunate.

Upon waking in a hospital bed, Mia learns that she was shot in the abdomen, but, otherwise, remembers nothing about what happened. Ms. Winocour, who wrote the screenplay along with Marcia Romano and Jean-Stéphane Bron, doesn’t elaborate on the nature of the murderous evening. 

Might this have been a terrorist attack? Ms. Winocour’s brother, it is worth noting, was present during the concert at the Bataclan theater on November 13, 2015 in which 90 were killed. While hiding in the theater, he stayed in contact with his sister by texting. His memories funnel their way into Ms. Winocour’s picture.

A matter of months go by and Mia is unable to do her job — we see her at the top of the movie working as a translator — and things are not altogether right with Vincent. Mia moves into a friend’s empty apartment to get her head together. 

An attempt to join a survivor’s group is hampered by accusations by a fellow member that Mia had barricaded herself in the restroom on the night of the shooting, locking the door and not allowing anyone else a safe haven. Mia can’t remember well enough to refute the charge.

Against her better inclinations, Mia continues to visit the restaurant in the hopes of jump-starting her memory of the assault. She eventually comes to know Thomas, played by Benoît Magimel in full Belmondo-mode, who we initially see eyeing Mia on the night in question, is currently undergoing treatment to rebuild the shinbone in his left leg. 

A yes-we-saw-it-coming romance begins to brew between Mia and Thomas. Should you have wondered if an external fixator — you know, one of those intimidating steel contraptions used to repair broken limbs — might be an obstacle to faire l’amour, well, rest assured, it isn’t.

“Revoir Paris” is Mia’s story and it is, for the most part, told well. The narrative trajectory of the film takes a byway here-and-there into the travails of adjacent characters, and these moments disrupt the flow — it’s as if Ms. Winocour were applying cinematic band-aids to provide both backstory and continuity. 

As much as Ms. Efira and Ms. Carax should be commended for performances that are every bit as moving as they are intended to be, the real star of the movie — that would be Paris — can’t help steal a bit of their thunder. 

“I wanted to shoot the real city . . . ” Ms. Winocour avers, ” . . . I wanted something both raw and hypnotic.” In that endeavor, the director succeeded very well indeed.