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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: 2 Days in Paris

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#1 of 1 Posted 7/17/07 10:09 PM

From Harveycritic Posts 1637 Last Jan-30
To All [Msg # 22528.1 ]

2 DAYS IN PARIS (2 jours a Paris)

Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey S. Karten
Samuel Goldwyn Films
Grade: B+
Directed by:    Julie Delpy
Written By: Julie Delpy
Cast:   Julie Delpy, Adam Goldberg, Daniel Bruhl, Marie Pillet, Albert Delpy, Aleksia Landeau, Adan Jodorowsky, Alexandre Nahon, Ludovic Berthillot
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 7/17/07
Opens: August 10, 2007

After seeing such American comedies as “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” and “License to Wed”–both of which depend more on lowbrow visual gags than on idiosyncratic dialogue-- I found visiting with the multi-talented Julie Delpy a pleasure. Delpy, who appears to favor romances focused on talk between two people as in Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunset” involving a reconnection between her character and Ethan Hawke’s, this times directs a film that she has also written and edited. The pace is fast, the comic timing just perfect. “2 Days in Paris,” which was shot in just four weeks, hones in on a relationship between two lovers, Jack (Adam Goldberg) and Marion (Julie Delpy). One would think that forty-eight hours spent in the world’s most romantic city would cement their bond: instead, because the two characters are neurotic in their own special ways, their experience in Marion’s home town could be their last. Romantic though the picture may be, its principal concern is comedy, coming across in the screwball variety about a hypochondriac man in the Woody Allen image and a woman in her mid-thirties who appears to have dated half the men in her neighborhood.

The Parisian people do not emerge as too different from the American stereotype: arrogant, nationalistic, xenophobic, their attitudes adding to Jack’s discomfort while on his girlfriend’s turf. It doesn’t help that Marion, who never married but has had her share of lovers, is terminally flirtatious, even acting seductively toward two firemen who arrive at her parent’s home in response to an emergency call. Nor does it help that Jack understands no French and assumes–in some cases rightfully–that people surrounding him are talking about him behind his back in a manner that’s not overly accepting.

Most of the fun occurs during their stay in the upstairs room of Marion’s parents’ home, where Anna (Marie Pillet) and Jeannot (Albert Delpy)–who happen to be Julie Delpy’s real-life folks--put Jack to the test, surprised that a Yank would even have heard of Jean Renoir and Moliere. Delpy Sr. steals every scene in which he appears, a roly-poly, fun-loving, bearded anarchist who taunts a man who could become his future son-in-law by exposing him to the horrors of eating rabbit’s head (the sign of a real man, in his opinion).   As Marion runs into one former boyfriend after another, Jack can’t help feeling that his girl is on the sluttish side, refusing to accept the fact that she may have had love affairs before the two even met.

Despite their chemistry, the two are mismatched, their differences too great to be bridged, but writer-director Delpy does not monopolize the film’s time with herself. She chooses instead to unfold a nutty city filled with the likes of a racist cabdriver (who hates Romanians, Arabs and Yanks), a mother who compulsively launders and irons Jack’s clothes including his jeans, and an animal rights activist (Daniel Bruhl–who appears in “The Bourne Ultimatum”) who sets off a smoke bomb in the bathroom of a fast-food joint on his way to “making the world a better place.”

Not Rated.    94 minutes   © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: 2 Days in Paris

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