ROAD TO DISCOVERY
LANE SAVORS UNCONVENTIONAL TRIP TO‘ PARIS’
NEW YORK — In “Paris Can Wait” (opening Friday), Diane Lane takes an unexpected ride. It's just over seven hours by car from Cannes to Paris, a trip Lane's Anne takes when her film producer husband (Alec Baldwin) flies off to tend to a troubled set. Anne's driver is Jacques (Arnaud Viard), her husband's business associate. He turns out to be a gourmet dedicated to living each day as if it were his last. He dines on elaborate dishes, takes in historic sights and manages, as a true Frenchman, to make time for a brief reunion with an ex-lover. Startled, Anne finds herself on a life-changing trip. Lane has been to Cannes several times, but her post-festival road trips were more planned affairs. “I'd never made the drive directly to Paris, so I didn't know all the things that were on the way,” she said. “And when I had a French husband” — actor Christopher Lambert, whom she divorced in 1994 — “he would just drive as quickly as possible to get there.” Lane realizes that Anne hadn't “anticipated anything more than a glorified cab ride.” “She figured this gentleman would maintain his boundaries. Yet how can you possibly look the gift horse in the mouth when somebody's wining and dining you and being very gracious? I like the fact that she's going beyond her plateau level of tolerance and her usual parameters of experience.” Anne isn't taking this sudden trip as the supportive wife or mother or even a dutiful daughter. “There's nobody there to justify her reason for being there,” said Lane, 52. “She realizes she can just be there on her own and say, `This is amazing!' `Look at this river!' and `Look at this building, this craft.' “It becomes an education process and a surrendering process for her. She's relinquishing control and allowing spontaneity and having a bit of an awakening to the fact that she just been confronted with these existential questions from her husband's business partner.” That's why “Paris Can Wait” is, she believes, “a gift for everyone in the audience, showing how they, too, could benefit from oscillating to a slower (speed). What would it be like to stop and smell the roses — especially on this budget?”