Romance takes off, eventually, for a couple of strangers who meet at an airport in Paris

Fully 30 minutes into Jet Lag, an airport encounter between two jagged French professionals who might be a perfect emotional fit, I was waiting for Juliette Binoche to appear.

Imagine my shock when I realized that the creature under the lacquer-red coiffure and the showgirl maquillage must be Binoche, she whose earth-angel visage never before has been profaned with aquamarine eye shadow, rouge blush and vermilion lipstick.

As Rose, a beautician who hides her own charms behind a nimbus of L'Oreal products, Binoche resembles Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich, and, if possible, radiates a star wattage even more blinding.

In the way of such things, once the beautician scrubs clean her face and hair - objects of an inadvertent vinaigrette bath administered by a chef (Jean Reno) she meets in the Air France waiting area during a general strike - she becomes truly beautiful.

Conversely, once the frantic and heavily defended chef slows down to smell the coffee, he opens up to the chatterbox cosmetician in ways he cannot to other women.

At 80 minutes, Jet Lag, a diverting film from veteran French screenwriter Danièle Thompson, is less a full meal of a film than what the French call an amuse bouche, or appetizer.

While running away from her longtime beau, Rose collides with Félix (Reno), a celebrity chef headed for Munich and a reunion with his estranged gal pal. Already suffering from extreme agitation, they further inflame each other like raw chili on an exposed wound. Inevitably their paths diverge and just as inevitably, converge again. They need each other as the press needs the garlic.

If this were an American movie (like, say, Steven Soderbergh's Full Frontal), the stars would overwhelm the flimsy whimsy. But Binoche and Reno beautifully calibrate the scale of their performances so that we're focused not on star turns but on how strangers size each other up. In a heartbeat these psychically scarred strangers proceed from civility to savagery to touching intimacy, all in keenly observed dialogue. Unlike American romances, this one isn't about shedding clothes so much as it is about shedding prejudices.

Thompson, who directed and wrote the script with her son, Christopher, is an astute observer of how travel dislocates people and makes them rethink who they are. One of her best scripts was for Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, about Parisians who go to the provinces for a funeral and only begin to understand their petty snobberies once they are out of the capital.

Because it takes place at Paris' Charles De Gaulle airport and because it features stars who drift into each other's orbit, Jet Lag may strike cinephiles of a certain age as equal parts Alphaville and A Man and a Woman. It's an enjoyable getaway into retro romance.

Contact film critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.

Jet Lag (Décalage Horaire) *** (out of four stars)

Produced by Alain Sarde, directed by Danièle Thompson, written by Christopher Thompson and Danièle Thompson, photography by Patrick Blossier, music by Eric Serra, distributed by Miramax Films. In French with English subtitles.

Running time: 1 hour, 21 mins.

Rose. . . Juliette Binoche

Félix. . . Jean Reno

Sergio. . . Sergi López

Parent's guide: R (profanity, sexual candor)

Showing at: Ritz Five and Ritz Sixteen/NJ