Starring Juliette Binoche, Jean Reno. Written by Christopher
Thompson, Danièle Thompson. Directed by Danièle Thompson. (14A) 92 min.
Opens Aug 15.
If you have to be stuck in an airport for an hour and a half, you
could do worse than to be stuck in Paris with Juliette Binoche and Jean
Reno, even if they themselves are stuck in a romantic comedy that's as
stale as yesterday's croissant.
Binoche is cast against type as
Rose, a frou-frocked beautician who falls for a jaded frozen-foods chef
named Félix (the perfectly cast Reno) during an airport strike that
lasts conveniently all day and night. Rose borrows Félix's phone after
hers gets flushed down a toilet, and though they have nothing in common
besides being terribly sexy, they're thrown together by a series of
chance re-encounters that wouldn't seem so annoying if they happened in
real life every so often when you really wanted them to.
The outlines of their characters are maddeningly trite: Rose is fleeing an abusive boyfriend (With a Friend Like Harry's
Sergi López); Félix is twice divorced and frozen like his foods. But
once the action moves to Félix's hotel suite, the actors fill in the
details with nuances only veterans of both life and cinema can provide.
Binoche brings a tremulousness to Rose that turns into a kind of
strength against Reno's casual arrogance. Similarly, Reno brings a
quiet dignity to Félix's panic attacks while another actor might simply
exploit them for comic effect.
As Rose and Félix struggle to
figure out how much the other has left to offer after life's
disappointments, the film presents a reason for being beyond boy
meeting girl. These characters cart around pleasing loads of emotional
baggage for a romantic comedy, which makes the final half hour of
cat-and-mouse games a huge letdown. A film that returns to formula
after testing it is sometimes worse than one that never broke from it
at all.