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2 Days in Paris review
:. Director: Julie Delpy
:. Starring: Julie Delpy, Adam Goldberg
:. Script: Julie Delpy
:. Running Time: 1:36
:. Year: 2007
:. Country: France/Germany
:. Official Site: 2 Days in Paris
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There are films for which you have an immediate tenderness. Actresses whose demands you're ready to forgive: you forget the pose, the false modesty, and you see only what you want to see. Their presence onscreen marks the history of cinema - even if their role was sometimes only a moment or a simple appearance. But...there was a director and there was a choice. And the actress was selected. One thinks of Leos Carax. Jarmusch. Kieslowski.
Julie Delpy is a French expat living in New York. She's made her place there, and has appeared on American TV. She was on E.R. for a few episodes—she didn't leave an enduring impression there, but still: July Delpy on E.R.? Like Catherine Deneuve on Nip/Tuck or Elodie Bouchez on Alias. Delpy was the first, and she did it long before any other French actress.
She sings. She makes a record or two. Whether you like it or not, it's no big deal. There is something about this girl that makes you want to forgive her for everything: Her mistakes, her false notes. When she stumbles she's still loved because she has a certain genuine humanity about her.
She directed her first feature length film, Looking for Jimmy in 2002, and French critics were a bit sulky—she did become an American after all, what did she expect? She persists and returns with 2 Days in Paris. Two days in Paris in which she settles scores with the artistic milieu, taxi drivers, politics, the 70's, Père Lachaise cemetery, Hollywood films, men, George Bush, terrorism, the war in Iraq, family, sex and The Da Vinci Code. And, on a corner of the set, she also explains that she left France because no one liked her "thing." She's not talking about art or ideas. She's talking about herself. Her parants. Her cat. Her boyfriend for the past two years, Jack (Adam Goldberg, unforgettable as a persecuted expat).
2 days in Paris is a mix between two cultures, two ways of being intimate with cinema. Somewhere between Pascal Bonitzer and Woody Allen. One sails between two currents, from a Venetian gondola to the quays of the Seine.
Julie Delpy suffers from a vision problem: small holes on the retina which condemn her to see only one part of the image. From the Big Apple to the Big Picture, Julie Delpy offers herself incompletely, a bit shaky and still unique. Human once again. From these 2 days in Paris which, even if they sometimes flirt with an Amelie-style romanticism, she never dwells on it: on the contrary, worried behind her Diane Keaton style glasses (how not to think of Woody Allen's fetish actress from the film's beginning to end?) Julie Delpy settles scores with herself. A story about getting rid of something and taking something else. It's even better, even funnier, more moving and more successful than her first effort. And that's the most we can wish for her.
Anji Milanovic
 French Films: New 2012+ Reviews
French Films: 1998 - 2011 Reviews
French Movies Group
French Music Reviews
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