I used to have intermittent weirdness opening the driver's door from the inside - maybe like you're saying. More specifically, I'm talking about pulling the lever to mechanically unlock and then open the door from the inside. Not too bad and not often enough to worry much, but I did wonder about it because of the obvious safety issue. The solution whenever it would happen would be to keep trying and then, if needed, roll down the window and open from the outside handle.

I repaired my door lock actuator the other day, and the whole thing works better than it ever has, including this issue. I now realize it was a little uncertain every time I pulled the handle. Now, every time I pull it, it is clear what is happening (unlock, open) and it works every time.

Not sure if it was just the act of removing and reinstalling the actuator (maybe things were not in there right; it seems that the PO did a hack job replacement of the door handle carrier - fortunately for me, that was about the only thing not done at the dealer), or maybe the previously weak actuator was doing just enough to unlock the door, but leaving things in a bad spot, or ??? But surely it is 100% now and was less than that before the actuator repair.

So I would recommend to at least consider that the door lock actuator is related to this behavior. Also, double check (disconnect and reconnect, at least) the interface between the inner door handle lever and the cable that it pulls. That's very simple, but I did disconnect and then reconnect that as part of my repair, and that could have been it.

Also, if I am correct in reading that you are specifically talking about the inner door handle, then you might want to edit to make that clear in your first post.

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2001 X5 3.0i, 203k miles, AT, owned since 2014