Paris Can Wait - 2 smiles

I was disappointed with Eleanor Coppola's romantic travelogue, "Paris Can Wait." This is a light and frilly road trip about a married, middle-aged woman who hops into a car with Jacques (Arnaud Viard), her husband's business partner and embarks on a journey through the French countryside marked by detours to restaurants and museums and a picnic by a stream. What's missing are truly likable characters and and engaging plot. It's unfortunate that the wonderful and captivating Diane Lane is stuck playing an unsympathetic character we like less at the end of the movie than we did at the start. And Jacques comes across as a little creepy, trying to find excuses to touch Anne and giving her the typical come-on. He keeps borrowing her credit card because he has a cash flow problem and he's a chain smoker. Unfortunately for Anne, we don't know much about her other than her daughter is off to college in the fall and she likes to take odd close-up photographs and Lane's facial expressions and sarcastic delivery gets tiring after a while. Coppola does manage to add in two tear-jerker scenes, one for each character, but that's too little too late. I was expecting more from "Paris Can Wait" and I really wanted to like it.