I've not had a lot of luck with airline movies. When I first arrived on the plane today, the line-up didn't look much better: Ben Stiller in the thoroughly pointless Starsky & Hutch; "The Rock" in the thoroughly plotless Walking Tall; and Mike Myers in The Cat and the Hat, the film that set out to prove that The Grinch Who Stole Christmas wasn't such a bad idea--at least by comparison.

Thank goodness the Japanese stuff was better. Indeed, not only better, but positively good, if not great. First Love, Last Love is a simple romance involving a love triangle in which each leg converses in a different language. Min and Lin, two sisters in Shanghai, both fall for the same bit of damaged goods, automotive designer Hayase. However, he can speak to the elder sister only in English, and the younger one only in Japanese.

Mr. Hayase barely wants to speak to either of them at the beginning, however. He's too shellshocked by the fact that his wife and his partner ran off together, leaving him broken and isolated. Indeed, he meets the younger sister at mandatory English lessons, but the elder sister when she saves him from a suicide attempt.

The rest of the story focuses on the interactions between each character's flaws: Hayase's hopelessness, Lin's immaturity, and Min's instictive urge to overprotect those she loves. The plot itself is unexceptional. What carries it forward is the striking rightness of how most of these difficulties are resolved. For instance, at the deepest point of Hayase's funk, he's shamed into action when Min calls him a coward. That spark starts him trying to mend his ways, but it's not like his life turns around because of a speech. Finally he comes across the young truck-driver who loves Lin, his truck stranded in the ditch. And almost immediately, his jacket's off and he's helping to schlep bags of cement, notwithstanding that he's in his suit.

The change is immediate: whatever wreck the rest of his life is, he and the boy have gotten a large truck out of a ditch, a success life can't take away. It's really the first point you see him smile, the point at which his fortunes reverse.

It's these scenes that make the movie: technically it's not much, but what it lacks of the superlative it makes up in the familiar: you know these people. The simlplicity of the dialogue benefits from the multi-lingual love triangle: what might otherwise seem a stilted sequence of love-movie cliches suits a relationship based on limited vocabulary. Some of the non-verbal communication is far better presented, but even where the director shows and doesn't tell there's not a lot that's groundbreaking. Still, it's solidly put-together, the acting isn't half-bad, and if you're looking for a weepy that isn't a waste of ninety minutes of your time, you could do worse.