The world people may certainly be in different stages of evolution. What else would explain the enormous hopeless poverty in certain lands and overbearing all encompassing wealth in some others? On a different plane, there is general feminine romanticism on one hand and clear incisive rationality on the other.

Producer\director team of Merchant\Ivory (Howard’s End, Remains of the Day) come together again in this lush porcelain view of the general cultural disparity, especially in the relational realm, between the Americans and the French. While the Americans may be equally morally compromised, they don’t want to savor the opinion that love, as some generally accepted social human ideal does exist. The French on the other hand have accepted that love or romance in general is mostly an absurdly out-of-date fashion and must not be allowed any serious attention.

Kate Hudson is the young American woman who decides to visit her pregnant sister Naomi Watts in Paris who is losing a rocky marriage to a French artist. What ensues is a series of seemingly fortunate events that ignite Kate’s imagination. The film’s prime conceit is the almost childlike vulnerability of Kate Hudson on one hand and hope of Naomi Watts on the other. The French characters are lustful practical beings who concentrate and their personal pleasures and freedom using women as objects which the American women almost seem to love. Even when they are socially sophisticated writers like Olivia (Glenn Close.) Matthew Modine as the wronged husband is there merely to prove that juvenility is not merely a trait of American women.

Generally predictable and having not much new to offer than is already well understood, the film is nonetheless entertaining and worth watching is for nothing else than for two pretty women wrapped up in color only possible in films.