More than 100 minutes of tedium masquerading as a movie, this is a Claude Lelouch-type romance that's not even a quarter as good as those old French films in which the hero and heroine are destined for each other but never meet before the last reel.

With a script this pretentious, it would take players far better than Jeanne Tripplehorn and Dylan McDermott to make any emotional impact with this story of two people emotionally stunted since childhood.

And, because you know Tripplehorn and McDermott are going to end up with each other, you can't summon up enthusiasm for any other relationships in the film.

The courtyard setting of 'La Fortuna', where ghost writer Trippelhorn moves in the second half of the film, is enough of a star by itself to have been awarded a whole movie; here it enters proceedings too late for us to maintain any interest in the outcome.

Even TV megastars Sarah Jessica Parker and Jennifer Aniston can't save it.