Review: 2 Days in Paris

"Venice is the city of love. It is also the city that is above water, and that will be underwater someday."

The French reverence for Woody Allen is in full force in Julie Delpy’s directorial debut 2 Days in Paris, a manic comedy of culture and relationship clash between two mismatched New Yorkers on a two-day stopover in Paris at the tail end of a Venetian getaway. Stars Julie Delpy and Adam Goldberg, each delivering comic and neurotic zingers with enjoyable zest, are in full-on Diane Keaton and Woody Allen mode, which offers an enjoyable vintage kick with modern new twists.

French-born, ex-pat interior designer Marion (Delpy) is on holiday with nervous, allergic photographer boyfriend Jack (Goldberg). They seem a classic mismatched pair: cool and excitable; French and American; Mars and Venus. While trying to energize their waning two-year relationship, Paris itself throws obstacle after obstacle in their path, from Marion’s frantic family to numerous run-ins with her ex-lovers, which Jack finds increasingly difficult to reconcile.

Also scripted by Delpy, shedding her French sex symbol status in favor of a lived-in visage, 2 Days in Paris, while not remarkable, is impressively observant about how couples communicate with each other today—largely through conflict and misunderstanding. It also works very well as a comic look at French and American mores. After one public outburst where Jack warns Marion that she suffers from "impulse control disorder" and they might be shot, she replies, "We don’t shoot people in France."

What is most special about Delpy’s writing here is an honest look at the fragility of contemporary relationships, the fleeting nature of which seem to sadden the filmmaker deeply. When the film reaches its final sequences, her moment-to-moment realizations about the impermanence of the now and the inability for most modern couples to sustain—shot in near-silent frustration as close-ups of a wounding argument—are surprisingly poignant. Yet, she also understands the trivialities of love in a larger world context of "George Bush, the war in Iraq and avian flu."

Working with cinematographer Lubomir Bakchev and shooting on high-def video, the visual style is natural and handheld and often as animated as the characters sometimes-manufactured conflicts. At once juncture, Delpy takes occasion to draw circles and lines across the frame to illustrate the idea of meaningful global coincidences. And Paris here gleams, as it has in several other recent films like Broken English and Paris Je’Taime, though director Delpy won’t have any of this picture postcard style, her Marion revealing amusingly blasé perspectives on Jack’s incessant picture-taking.

The film doesn’t work about as often as it does. It stumbles in an early, indulgent and gratingly unfunny extended sequence set in Marion’s home and featuring Delpy’s real life parents, that plays like a throwaway sitcom. And the opening third of 2 Days in Paris walks a delicate line between endearing and obnoxious, and one may join either camp early depending on tolerance for what initially feels like calculated, exhausting bickering. But there are also riotous moments here, such as an exasperated Jack trying to order a burger in a French fast-food joint or being mistaken for a purse snatcher, and Goldberg really makes these moments work. There are some real gems here, and 2 Days in Paris delivers when it comes to Goldberg’s impeccable timing and Delpy’s pathos, and when Delpy herself lets go in the film’s final reels.

Delpy, international star and once-waifish Kieslowski muse, has really built a solid indie reputation in her collaborations with Richard Linklater on both Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. As an actress, she has a coltish beauty with her translucent skin and blonde mane, here coifed appropriately shabby. But anyone who has seen her act in the last few pictures is aware of her brainy confidence and good humor. 2 Days in Paris, from her own pen, gives her room to really stretch her comedic, melancholic and poetic wings.

There are pointed barbs at ugly American tourists and French cabbies, and Delpy has much fun skewering social issues, American politics, Bush supporters and The Davinci Code breakers ("The physical embodiment of everything that is wrong culturally and politically in this world" and a film Delpy herself lobbied to star in) and an unexpected Jim Morrison legacy, which is a real hoot. And the many observations about life—from the pitfalls of photographing versus living to the messiness of dealing with ex-lovers—make it clear that in a most personal film, she has opened her creative floodgates. It might have been called The World According to Delpy. An assured debut.

-Lee Shoquist