2 giorni a Parigi

What is it with Julie Delpy? I have only seen a hand-full of her movies but she always manages to surprise and excite. She acts brilliantly as the title character in Tarantinoesque Killing Zoë, manages to stay convincing in the far-fetched An American Werewolf in Paris and is great as a young lover in Before Sunrise and as a confident woman in the sequel Before Sunset. This brings us to 2 days in Paris which could easily be mistaken for a continuation of the Sunrise/Sunset movies. And that would be a huge mistake: 2 Days in Paris is a dialogue driven romantic comedy dissecting a couples quasi-dysfunctional relationships and how they have to come to terms with their individual imperfections to be able to truly coexist as a pair. Though that may not sound like compelling viewing its actually hugely entertaining as it dissects a million small mix-ups which can make or break a couple.

Adam Goldberg is compelling as the sarcastic yet witty American boyfriend visiting Paris for the first time with his girlfriend. What follows is a series of hugely entertaining misunderstandings involving cross cultural differences, hilarious conversations in broken French with family members and a series of unplanned rendezvous with former lovers all of which combine to drive him high up the paranoia ladder.

It's refreshing to find out that not only does Julie Delpy act brilliantly as the naive and clumsy Marion but she also directed and wrote it, heck she even composed the soundtrack.

The lasting message of this movie is although you might hate 80% of the things your lover does if you just cant live without them don't lose them

Julie Delpy excels in '2 Days in Paris' as she writes, directs, produces, composes the music and stars in this romantic bitter/sweet comedy. Opposite Adam Goldberg, who has amongst other things played psycho Eddie in Friends and Private Mellish in 'Saving Private Ryan', Delpy shines as the nerdy photographer who has trouble with her eyes. The two central performances and sharp script means the film flows along at a pretty fast pace with the one liners so frequent you could easily miss the odd one. The situations explored around relationships and family are universal and so easy for anyone to relate to, there are misunderstood physical situations and language barriers which all add to the overall melodrama/comedy unfolding on screen. The film is peppered with brilliant moments from the awkward to the bizarre and the laughs come thick and fast, with Paris as a backdrop the lovers weave in and out of one situation to another always in love yet always on the verve of break-up. Co-starring Delpy's real father as her in film father shows a sense of tightness and a labour of love that comes across in the finished product. Like a cross between something from Woody Allen and Amelie this film has a special naivety full of wonderment juxtaposed with the dark underbelly of life that is at times hard to escape. Whether you laugh or cry you can't fail to be moved by a film so simple in its execution of themes that can, as displayed, be so complicated. Delpy has made something she, and everyone involved, should be very very proud of.

The culture-clash story might have been done before, but this is still a very refreshing and most of the time utterly hilarious movie. Myself and the rest of the theater burst out laughing every couple of minutes, which makes me forgive the few scenes that made me uncomfortable. Definitely not for the faint of heart or easily offended!

The characters might seem over the top at times, but they're still likable and real (as witnessed by the fact that the artwork in the gallery was actually made by Julie Delpy's father). I thought that Julie Delpy's parents stole the show whenever they were on screen, although Delpy and Goldberg both do a very good job.

All in all, it feels like a very personal look at French (or rather, Parisian bohemian) life, and very much worth a viewing. Or even two.

It's a pretty small sub-genre of films, in which Julie Delpy plays an irritating European, wandering round a European city in the company of an even more annoying American. But Delpy, who starred in Richard Linklater's 'Before Sunrise' and its sequel, has now made a film of her own in a similar mould. Fortunately, it's not as self-regarding as Linklater's films, but it isn't funny enough to really work as a comedy, and if it's characters are a little less unlikeable, they're still not really interesting, being too self-consciously eccentric. Delpy tries to paint a picture of the reality of a mature relationship; but it doesn't really work when the protagonists have the emotional development of teenagers. I sincerely hope the genre goes no further than here.

I watched 2 Days in Paris staring Julie Delpy and Adam Goldberg last night. I've never much cared for Adam Goldberg, and I spent my own 2 days in Paris in 2000 and it was the hardest 2 days on a relationship I've ever had. Maybe that's why this has become one of my favorite films of all time. Watching Adam Goldberg deal with some of the same foreign travel problems and relationship issues that torture him throughout this movie.

The movie is half in French. It is definitely to your advantage if you don't speak French, because a key plot element is how Jack (Adam Goldberg) becomes so regularly frustrated by not understanding the language.

In the end, I think I loved this movie because it is one of the best love stories I've ever seen. It's not a Hollywood fairytale romance, it's real, it's gritty, quirky, funny, and ugly, just like love can be in real life.