Filmmaker Daniele Thompson began her career as a screenwriter in the 1960s and has written screenplays for Cousin, Cousine and Queen Margot. Her second film as director is Jetlag.Rose, Juliette Binoche, a beautician, is fleeing a bad relationship and heading for Acapulco; Felix, Jean Reno, a celebrity chef about to launch a line of frozen food, is in transit between New York and Munich, where he plans to attend a funeral. But they both get stuck at the Paris Charles De Gaulle airport: there\'s an air traffic controllers\' strike, bad weather, a computer crash. This very dissimilar couple meet when Rose accidentally flushes her mobile phone down the toilet and Felix lends her his; a chance encounter which eventually leads to a night in a room at the airport Hilton.
This is a small-scale romantic comedy, virtually a two-hander for a pair of accomplished actors, though Sergi Lopez makes a brief appearance as the violent man Rose is escaping. An opening voice-over by Rose, who was raised by Communist parents who disapproved of all things American, prepares us for the kind of film we\'re going to see; when she was a child she\'d risked her parents\' wrath by sneaking off to see Roman Holiday. Jet Lag isn\'t ever likely to reach the classic status of that film, and indeed it\'s little more than an amiable time-waster, slickly directed by Daniele Thompson, professionally produced but quite unremarkable. The end credits include a recipe for a veal dish Felix prepares in the film\'s most romantic sequence.
