After her life gets upended by her husband’s adultery, a neurotic middle-aged bibliophile decides to regain peace and balance by the most contrarian means imaginable: She takes driving lessons in Manhattan.

“Learning to Drive,” yet another of those self-empowering fables about women getting their mojo back, is a fond, gentle story of two people from contrasting worlds who learn to appreciate their differences.

Dumped by her husband, book critic Wendy (Patricia Clarkson) nervously takes up driving with the reassuring assistance of Darwan (Ben Kingsley), a lonely Sikh Indian from Queens.

The movie putters along as softly as Wendy drives. Despite its lack of narrative horsepower, though, its character sketches are pleasing. And amusing: What could be more delightful than watching a character based on the feminist Katha Pollitt, who wrote the New Yorker story that inspired the film, trying to win back her man by giving him a lap dance and pleading, “I can keep a clean house, I can wear a tight skirt, I can bake a cherry pie”?