Two Days In Paris - Preview
Preview by Jack Foley
FANS of Julie Delpy are urged to check out her latest film as writer, director and star, Two Days In Paris, which has been selected as the closing film of this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival.
Much like the Before Sunrise and Before Sunset movies, the film focuses on a young couple and the romance and difficulties they share over a small period of time together in a major European city. But this is a grittier, ruder version of Richard Linklater’s films that’s equally as fun.
The film picks up as high-maintenance French photographer Marion (Delpy) and her American boyfriend Jack (Adam Goldberg) decide to pay a visit to her family in Paris, and find their strained relationship further challenged by the culture clash.
He can’t handle her spontaneity, or the lax French approach to sex and personal hygiene (especially since they seem to be in the habit of bumping into her ex-boyfriends). She, on the other hand, is free-spirited to the point of psychosis and likes to pick fights with anyone who doesn’t agree with her views.
Their relationship is further tested by her seriously eccentric parents (played by Delpy’s real-life folks), one particularly persistent ex (Adan Jodorovsky, son of directing legend Alejandro) and an affable terrorist with a fast-food phobia (Daniel Brühl).
Delpy wrote and directed the film as a pre-cursor to some of her intended bigger projects (most notably, the forthcoming The Countess) but it’s an accurate depiction of contemporary relationships that benefits from her assured comic sensibilities.
Certainly, it has already drawn a favourable critical response from other film festivals with The Hollywood Reporter describing it as “an utterly charming comedy of sexual manners that should do very well wherever audiences appreciate savvy dialogue and smart, observational filmmaking”.
And Variety described it as “an entertaining, deliciously played walk-and-talker by helmer-writer-star Julie Delpy and co-star Adam Goldberg”.
For those who can’t catch it at Edinburgh (where Delpy herself will be in attendance for the closing night gala), Two Days In Paris opens in UK cinemas on Friday, August 31. We’ll have more coverage then…