Kate (Meg Ryan) is afraid to fly for the first time, and as a result, her soon-to-be-husband Charlie (Timothy Hutton) heads off to Paris without her.
On his first night there, he calls her at exactly six o'clock. On the next night, it's a few minutes after six. On some indeterminate night (perhaps the third, perhaps several nights later), it's nearly 6:45, and he has some bad news. He's fallen in love with a French woman, who he will be marrying, and he won't be coming home. This can't be good.
Kate decides that rather than sitting around and moping, she is going to do something about this. She packs up her bags and gets on a plane and heads to Paris. There's just one problem. She's still afraid to fly. It gets worse when a rude, smelly Frenchman named Luc (played by the typically enjoyable Kevin Kline) sits next to her on the plane.
Luc and Kate have immediate chemistry, and within just a few moments he really has her riled up - enough so that rather than being concerned about the plane going down in flames, she is concentrating on yelling at him. When she gets wrapped up in this, he points out to her what a wonderful view they have now that they are airborne, and she is amazed to see that she has overcome her fear, even if it is just for a moment.
That's when we first see that Luc is up to something else. He has carried aboard a small vine cutting, but at this point we have no idea what he is doing with it, other than getting up every few minutes to make sure that it is wet. That, and he is unwrapping the base of it to reveal a lovely necklace, which he has presumably stolen, since he has no problem stealing drinks off of the cart. And when Kate eventually falls to sleep, he slips the vine into her bag so that she is the one who passes through security.
Before he can catch up with her on the other side, Luc meets up with an "old friend", who just happens to be a police officer (Jean Reno), and with the added attention, cannot risk going after his vine, so he lets Kate go for the time being, hoping to catch up with her later.
By the time he does so, she has already been the victim of another crook in Paris, and lost her bags. But luckily Luc knows the thief, and they find him, and also the vine, but not the necklace. So it looks like Luc is going to have to continue to follow Kate for some time, which he does, as Kate pursues Charlie to Cannes, where he is headed to meet the parents of his new love interest.
On the train to Cannes, Kate gets sick from eating too much cheese, and they end up stopping in a small village, where she sees a glimpse of Luc's real life - a vineyard that he lost to his brother, and an abandoned hillside which he hopes to turn into a vineyard one day. While it's not a secret that they will surely end up together, it's here that you see it turn into a possibility. They get back on the train to finish the trek to Cannes.
As they arrive and formalize their plans, the police have caught up with Luc as well, and Kate is trying to protect him, which she does without his knowledge, but the policeman friend of his spills the beans once Kate leaves, and he catches her just in time - on the return flight. As to Charlie? He wanted Kate, but she realizes that she didn't want him. It just wouldn't have worked out.
Rated PG-13 for some sexuality, language and drug references.
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