Gracefully paced romantic comedy about a couple of wayfaring strangers who meet-cute in a French airport shut down by an air-controllers' strike. It is good to see Juliette Binoche's relentless intensity turned against her for the purposes of comedy -- in the role of a high-strung beautician for whom her daily parfait of makeup is "like clothing" -- and it is good to see Jean Reno for once being human and vulnerable -- a bundle of ailments, allergies, and neuroses in the part of a gourmet chef on the verge of unveiling a line of frozen dinners -- instead of being an implacable killing machine. And it is good, lastly, to watch these two dissimilar people passing continual judgment upon one another: there is patently so much to judge, in both cases, and yet so much to learn, too. The film starts out with the heroine's wish, in voice-over, for one day in her life that would be like an old Hollywood movie, and the wish really does come true, no thanks at all to the Sappy Ending, but many thanks to the solidness of construction and the smoothness of finish. Writer and director Danièle Thompson (daughter of the featherweight French filmmaker Gérard Oury) was responsible as well for the underappreciated Christmas comedy, La Bûche. And like that one, this one marries the suavity of old Hollywood to the stickiness of real life. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd
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