Following on the heels of 2007’s delightful anthology Paris, Je T’aime comes this second entry in a series of cinematic valentines to culturally influential cities, conceived by producer Emmanuel Benbihy. (Rio, Shanghai, Jerusalem and Mumbai also await the loving treatment.) An eclectic group of filmmakers oversee the dozen short films, populated with familiar faces, collected here — Mira Nair, Allen Hughes, Brett Ratner, Shekhar Kapur, Fatih Akin, Joshua Marston, Chinese actor Jiang Wen and even Natalie Portman. The shorts are mostly discrete tales about love, broadly defined, but with a few loosely interwoven characters to underline the theme. Naturally, it’s a somewhat mixed bag, and doesn’t hold together as well as one might hope, or expect from a feature. But the good news is that there’s something here for everyone.

The lighthearted, ironic and flirty entries (including, surprisingly, a wryly funny prom date tale cooked up by Ratner and co-scripter Jeff Nathanson) are mostly the best. A notable exception to this rule, though, is a sidewalk encounter between Robin Wright Penn and Chris Cooper — one of two superlative, chatty, can-I-bum-a-smoke? submissions from Yvan Attal, and a beautifully melancholic segment that would have provided the perfect closer for the movie if it had been ordered properly. The worst entry? Working from a script by the late Anthony Minghella, Kapur misfires with a dewy, dreadfully sentimental tale starring Julie Christie as an aging singer and (no joke) Shia LaBeouf as a hunchback hotel bellhop. The target is poignance, but the movie grinds to a halt here, courtesy of LaBeouf’s ridiculous accent and some equally affected filmmaking.

Like the city it honors, New York, I Love You is a jumbled, chaotic affair, full of seduction, brio, contradiction and a pinch of pretentiousness. It’s not perfect, not by a stretch, but in lump sum it does intriguingly showcase moments when regret and/or romantic constipation are finally swallowed, and surging feelings of possibility return. And that’s worth celebrating, now and always. (Vivendi Entertainment, 110 minutes, R)