The passing last month of an international pop icon has generated new dialogue on the meaning of fame, and French writer/director Anne Fontaine seems to be mining a bit of that cultural familiarity with what could be viewed as a cautionary allegory in “The Girl from Monaco.”

What begins as an ostensibly frothy tale about a straight-laced lawyer’s infatuation with a TV weather girl, it ends with dark overtones for the price we pay for chasing money and fame.

Using the fabulously wealthy principality as a backdrop, Fontaine introduces us to Bertrand (Fabrice Luchini), a brilliant attorney staying on the “Rock” — as it’s known — to defend a wealthy socialite (Stephane Audran) accused of murdering her young Serbian lover.

Luchini may not be in the George Clooney bracket looks-wise, but his erudition, wit and charm seem irresistible to women. The only problem seems to be his own diffidence; he loves to talk to the opposite sex but is very reluctant to engage in any sort of intimacy.

Indeed, when the film opens we find him outside the entrance of his hotel in a clinch with a sexy, mature blonde. Their kiss suggests an interesting night ahead but Luchini instantly shies away and the opportunity is soon lost.

A few moments later, he meets a complete contradiction in Christophe (Roschdy Zem), assigned by the accused’s son to act as his bodyguard. In a very watchable performance, Zem is everything his boss is not, athletic, taciturn, and as we later discover, very direct with women.

In fact, that night Luchini is in need of some protection when a lusty, former mistress from Paris, bursts into his room declaring her, love and the troubling news — to him — that she has left her husband.

Breathlessly fending her off, Luchini escapes to Zem’s room and implores his bodyguard to “get rid of her.”

When he wakes up in his bodyguard’s room in the morning, the suave lawyer is both impressed and slightly envious when Zem matter-of-factly informs him that he bedded and banished the errant female.

“It’s just a physical thing with you,” asks Luchini. “Yes,” comes the reply from Zem.

Free of female entanglements for the moment, Luchini gets back to concentrating on the trial and visits his client in jail, where she seems strangely resigned to her fate and not very co-operative.

Could that have something to do with her playboy son, Louis Lasselle (Gilles Cohen), who intercepts Luchini for the latest progress as he leaves?

Back at his hotel room, Luchini catches some television, where he first sets eyes on Audrey (Louise Bourgoin), the umbrella-twirling epitome of a dumb blonde.

A short time later, he meets her in person when he is the star guest at the TV studios doing an interview about the murder trial.

Uncontrollable, sexy and unapologetically ambitious, Bourgoin pouts like Brigitte Bardot and dresses like Paris Hilton.

She sums up her attitude to life through her idol, Princess Diana.

“She had everything and it was taken away from her,” she later coos. “I’m going to live for the moment.”

Luchini, who watches her ride away from the studio on her pink scooter in the pouring rain, is instantly smitten and before long she has him rapped around her delicate fingers.

That soon includes dressing up in garish clothes to go night-clubbing, overcoming his physical shortcomings with a wild night in her bedroom at her parent’s home and participating in her hair-brained idea for filming him for a reality show.

All the while, Luchini’s trusted bodyguard, who is Bourgoin’s former lover, warns him against getting involved with her type.

It turns out to be good advice. As his infatuation deepens, Luchini finds himself caring less about his briefs and more about his loins, until a crime of passion will re-write the destiny of all three of them.