Starring Margherita Buy. In Italian, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable. 

Not every movie has to be a life-changing experience, even if it happens to be about a life that gets some shaking. Indeed, the shifts come slowly to Irene, perfectly played by the beautiful Margherita Buy, an enduring star of Italian cinema.

The “five star” part of the title comes from Irene’s cushy job with a hotel-rating system that sends her as a “mystery guest” to top hotels around the world. Like George Clooney’s Up in the Air character, she’s got her system wired. Unlike that guy, she’s not really longing for something else. (The Italian title translates, more assertively, as I Travel Alone.)

Our impeccably dressed heroine’s sleek self-sufficiency is perhaps based too heavily on secondhand duties as “cool aunt” to the daughters of her sister (Fabrizia Sacchi), with whom she’s constantly fighting. And intimacy comes at maybe too low a price with her ex-boyfriend (Stefano Accorsi), who’s struggling to get on with his own journey. In fact, it’s his attempt to move on that finally precipitates some needed soul-searching for both of them. Meanwhile, there are the alpine retreats of Switzerland and the belly dancers of Marrakesh to enjoy, plus an intriguing (if slightly didactic) Berlin encounter with another solo-voyage woman, played by Mike Leigh regular Lesley Manville.

The multilingual Irene exerts her force lightly, with a certain detachment, at every turn, and writer-director Maria Sole Tognazzi resists the urge to make her any kind of victim, even of her own circumstances. (Her father, Ugo Tognazzi, was one of Italy’s principal funnymen, and brother Gianmarco Tognazzi plays the sister’s musician husband.) In the end, some may find too little drama in the tale of a middle-aged woman seeking ways to make a good life one star better, but the gorgeously shot tale has enough depth to take you out of yourself for just over 80 thoughtfully judged minutes. (Stay for the credits, by the way.) One plot quibble, however: given the insularity of the hotel industry, if Irene actually revealed her identity at the end of each visit, wouldn’t that end her “mystery” status in a Shanghai minute?