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João Rosas’ “The Luminous Life” opens with Nicolau (Francisco Melo) just having turned 24. But he’s not at all ecstatic on the occasion. Residual pangs are tying him down. When friends insist on chilling with a few drinks, he excuses himself, stating he’s depressed. He cannot partake in exultation because he cannot shake off being mopey.

Nicolau is the archetypal drifter, a sad sack who’s recovering after a breakup. It’s been a year, and he hasn’t moved on. He’s still absorbed in the ache. He flings about, meandering through the city of Lisbon. He confesses to being clueless as to what he should be doing. His mother gently presses whether he still wants to be a musician. He’s nudged to invest more seriously in the pursuit of a job. If he keeps up this behaviour, all his life will dart past. But Nicolau struggles to derive purpose.

There is a specific kind of paralysis that can set in during your early twenties, a feeling of being a player character stuck in the starting zone while a vast, explorable world waits just outside. This is where we meet Nicolau, the 24-year-old protagonist of João Rosas’ The Luminous Life. A year after a painful breakup, Nicolau is adrift in a sea of inertia.

He lives with his parents, plays bass in a band going nowhere, and floats between menial temp jobs. His inner world is muted and gray, a stark contrast to the film’s setting: Lisbon in the radiant bloom of spring. The city is alive with light, energy, and promise, an environment practically begging for engagement.

The film immediately establishes itself as a gentle, observational study of this dissonance, capturing the strange melancholy of navigating a personal crisis when the world around you feels so vibrantly, indifferently beautiful.

As quarter-life crises go, the one experienced by tousle-haired musician Nicolau in “The Luminous Life” looks more endurable than most. Yes, he’s unemployed, living at home, recently broke up with his dream woman and is firmly convinced that he’ll never love that way again — but it’s spring in Lisbon, the city’s sidewalks, bars and cinemas are alive with social possibilities for an affable, handsome young lad such as he, and he’s not about to miss out on all of them. Which is to say the title of Portuguese director João Rosas’ debut feature isn’t at all ironic: This droll, delightful romantic comedy is an ode to the good times that can be had amid and around heartache, and the healing that eventually comes out of that very conflict.

To most viewers, Nicolau — played with irresistible, lightly goofy guilelessness by Francisco Melo — will be a welcome new acquaintance.

Films about 20-something characters drifting aimlessly through life have a tendency to drift themselves, but that can also be part of their charm. Not every movie needs to be a nail-biter, and not every plot needs to be engineered like a Maserati. Some of the best examples of the genre — Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise, Frances Ha, Fellini’s I Vitelloni — convey that feeling of endless drifting while remaining altogether captivating. In a sense, the drift becomes the crux of the story.

Nicolau (Francisco Melo), the shy and shaggy protagonist at the heart of Joao Rosas’ debut feature, The Luminous Life (A Vida Luminosa), feels like the quintessential drifter of our time — or at least as such a time exists in a contemporary western European capital. Lovesick and forever looking for gainful employment, he wanders around Lisbon in search of something he can’t quite name or put his hands on.

In “The Luminous Life,” Portuguese director João Rosas shows off his hometown Lisbon – but chances are, you won’t recognize it.

“It’s sentimental cartography: tourists don’t know these places, but they are important to me and to other people in the film. I wanted to show another side of the city: this is where we actually live. But if after seeing the film, someone decides to visit them, you are welcome to do it!”

For now, secret spots and sunny alleys are claimed by his protagonist Nicolau, in his 20s and directionless after a devastating breakup. Nicolau isn’t in the mood for anything, really, and questions his future as a musician. But he’s still surrounded by kindness.

“This kindness was already present in my previous films, but in this one in particular,” says Rosas ahead of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival premiere.

“I think it’s important nowadays,...