Jet Lag

By PETER CALDER

(Herald rating: * * * )

More entertaining than it has any right to be, thanks to the meticulous work of its two leads, this French confection is an instant cliche, an odd-couple farce about two people stranded at an airport who meet and bicker for 90 minutes before, well, you know how it ends.

Acapulco-bound Rose (Binoche) is a beautician on the run from a bad relationship which briefly, in one of the film's few genuinely amusing scenes, catches up with her; Felix (Reno) is a former celebrity chef turned manufacturer of gourmet frozen foods who may be en route to a family funeral in Munich.

The pair bond over his cellphone when she accidentally flushes hers down the dunny.

He's irritated at the intrusion and it's not hard to see why: she's a hopelessly neurotic blathering bimbo, tottering on high heels. But as strikes, bad weather and technical glitches conspire to postpone their flights, they get to know each other.

Binoche's Rose says in a voiceover at the film's opening that she always wanted one day in her life to be like an American movie, and it's an apt epigraph for the film. Jet Lag wants to be a Cary Grant-Katharine Hepburn comedy but it doesn't have the smarts.

The script, by director Thompson and her son Christopher (who are French, whatever their names may suggest), is content simply to set them up as opposites - he's first-class, she's economy; he's allergic to strong scent, she's a perfume freak - and then stand back and wait for something to happen.

What ensues possibly has greater appeal to French audiences - there is a distinctly Gallic feel to the farce but when it tries for a bittersweet ending it's drawing on funds it never banked.

To the extent it does work, it's down to the generous, watchful and intelligent work of the stars, particularly the hangdog and faintly tragic Reno. Binoche wants us to believe in the inner life of a character she really only draws in outline, but the outline is so gracefully sketched that it's hard not to be won over.

It's light and frothy and, with a bit of luck, the Americans won't remake it.

Cast: Jean Reno, Juliette Binoche

Director: Daniele Thompson

Running time: 91 mins

Rating: M (sex scenes, offensive language)

Screening: Lido