Décalage horaire (2002) - film review

Félix, the head of a frozen food empire, is on his way to Munich to attend a funeral and maybe start afresh with his ex-wife.  Meanwhile, Rose, a self-obsessed beautician, is about to catch a flight to Mexico, so that she can start a new life, far away from her bullying boyfriend Sergio.  Their separate itineraries cross at Paris airport.  When she accidentally loses her mobile phone, Rose asks Félix is she can borrow his.  It is the first in a series of happy coincidences which conspire to keep the two strangers together.  Stranded at the airport through employee strikes and bad weather, Rose and Félix decide to spend the night together in a hotel room.  They are complete opposites with nothing at all in common, so they couldn’t possibly fall in love – could they...?

After the success of her first film as a director, La Buche, in 1999, Danièle Thompson once again took up the directorial reins with this lightweight romantic comedy, which she again co-authored with her son, Christopher Thompson.  It is no great exaggeration to say that the words "French film comedy" and "Danièle Thompson" are virtually synonymous, since Thompson has worked on numerous such films since the 1960s, including some major box office successes – notably La Grande vadrouille (1966) and Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob (1973), which were directed by her father, Gérard Oury.  With that in mind, it would be a very brave man (or woman) who takes it upon himself to slate her work, but, unfortunately, Décalage horaire makes such an unpleasant duty a necessity.

In a nutshell, Décalage horaire is barely watchable.  It is one of the most insulting, incoherent and implausible French films to have been made for some years.  It takes as its reference point the sentimentalised romantic comedies which the Hollywood film factory mercilessly churns out by the truckload.  Now you would have thought that no self-respecting French film director would be tempted to go anywhere near this kind of sugar sweet cinematic tosh.  After all, French cinema has a reputation for sophistication, authenticity and well-intended sobriety.  Apparently no longer.  Décalage horaire illustrates a trend in which American films are having a big influence on French cinema, which is presumably a reaction to the growing popularity of American films with the French population at large.  This is a worrying trend, particularly when the result is an inconsequential piece of nonsense of the kind that Décalage horaire appears to represent.

In criticising this film, it is hard to know where to start.  Talk about a sitting duck.  Is it that the improbable plot, which relies almost entirely on ludicrous chance developments, is just too incredible to be taken seriously?  Is it that the staging of the piece is too static, the majority of the film taking place in a hotel bedroom?  Is it the relentless series of clichés, which include every possible variation of the mobile phone gag you could possibly imagine, and a few more besides.  Or is it the over-reliance on smoochy music to create a mood which the film singularly fails to create in other areas.  No, the primary reason why the film sucks so badly is because there is absolutely no chemistry between its two lead actors.

When the script goes to great pains to emphasise the differences between the two characters, Rose and Félix, there has to be something pretty tangible to suggest the mutual compatibility of the two people, otherwise how else can this be taken seriously as a love story?  Unfortunately, in spite of the formidable acting talent of Jean Reno and Juliette Binoche, there is nothing to suggest that two characters are meant for one another.  When Rose and Félix do finally fall for one another, there is a sense of queasiness, if not shock, as you ask yourself:  "Are they totally out of their minds?"

From watching this film it becomes painfully apparent that Danièle Thompson is much better suited to the conventional forms of French comedy, be that farce or comedy-drama.  This kind of pseudo-American romantic comedy looks awful when made by the French, and this could also explain why its stars, Reno and Binoche, are having such a hard time trying to make it work. If you are mildly drunk or badly in need of a soporific, Décalage horaire might just be bearable.  Try to watch it stone cold sober, wide awake and in full possession of your faculties, and the chances are that you really will end up suffering... from Jet Lag.

© James Travers 2004

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