Year of Release: 2007
Director: Julie Delpy
Screenplay: Julie Delpy
Starring: Julie Delpy, Adam Goldberg, Daniel Brühl
Running Time: 101 minutes
Genre: Romance, comedy, drama
French photographer Marion (Delpy) and her American boyfriend Jack (Goldberg) are on a holiday in Europe. Following a less than romantic trip to Venice, they go to Marion's native city of Paris. Jack is immediately uncomfortable by the cultural differences between France and America and his own ignorance of French, as well as by Marion's bohemian parents (Marie Pillet and Albert Delpy) and most specifically by the fact that they keep running into Marion's ex-boyfriends, all of whom she still seems to be friends with.
Julie Delpy is probably best known for starring in Richard Linklater's Before trilogy along side Ethan Hawke, and 2 Days in Paris is definitely from the same stable, once more about being a French woman and an American man wandering around a glamorous European city while discussing life, love, art and various things in between. With this film Delpy not only writes, directs and stars, she composed the score and edited the film, and cast her real life parents, Marie Pillet and Albert Delpy, as her character's parents. This has few surprises, and sometimes feels like a quirkier version of one of Woody Allen's later travelogue films but it is consistently funny, and the cast have real charm, despite the fact that their characters are intensely annoying, being judgemental, sanctimonious and often surprisingly cruel. The film is certainly no love letter to Paris, showing the City of Lights and it's inhabitants, in a pretty unpleasant light. Delpy directs the film with real style, although it always feels like a pretty good, but not stand-out quirky indie film, complete with voice-over and animated diagrams. It is a good film and pretty enjoyable. Followed by 2 Days in New York (2012).
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