2 Days in Paris

An American guy walks around Paris with his lover who happens to be an activist-type intellectual French girl. The girl is played by Julie Delpy and guess what?! She owns a chubby cat!

You might say: “I’ve seen this film before”. But no, you’d be wrong. The movie is not Before sunset and to my big surprise -and despite those general similarities- it is fundamentally different!

2 Days in Paris , written and directed - and played, and edited and co-produced and on and on and on - by Julie Delpy, is the story of a couple -Marion (Julie Delpy) and Jack (Adam Goldberg whom if you’re a big fan of Friends, you might recall him as Chandler’s freak roommate, Eddie!- who decide to finish up their trip to Venice by staying in Paris for two days, on their way back home to New York.

2 Days in Paris is cleverly hilarious. Characters are well-created and well-acted and awfully real (Well, what would you expect?! Her parents in the movie are her real parents) and while sometime they’re not as charming as you would expect- occasionally to the point of being disgustingly annoying (depends on your tolerance for eccentricity) they’re, most of the time, quite adorable and almost always preciously unique.

The cinematography is ingenious and from time-to-time, even kind of cute (especially the flashback scenes to Marion’s childhood) besides, she has skillfully managed to incorporate the profession of the girl and the obsession of the guy, photography, as well as the mood of the characters, into the visual texture of movie. Even more, it deliberately conveys the mood of a family video, recorded by a camcorder and thus perfectly compliments the title.

Comparing it to Before Sunset – which seems like an almost inevitable temptation – 2 days in Paris is a rather realistic portrayal of a relationship and of a city, to the dream-like mood of before sunset (and its prequel, Before Sunrise). Adam Goldberg - unlike the always cute, always adorable Ethan Hawke – is a germ-freak, grumpy, jealous nagger and Julie Delpy, is a flirtatious, slightly sluttish and rather self-centered character that you would well expect from that free-spirited Celine to be in the real life!

The relationship itself is not a fairytale-type love-at-first-sight either. Instead, two people who are far from perfect and trying – and believe me, trying really hard – to get through some serious rough patches in their relationship.

The strictly realistic soul of this film even stretches to the portrayal of the city. Here, Paris is not the calm and beautiful city of love where all her citizens are well-dressed, energetic and are holding hands in cute cafés but a crowded metropolitan – though one of the most stunning one in the world- with some real people among which, you could bump up to almost anybody, from total freaks to real idiots and racists.

This Paris, and particularly if you don’t know French, can be intimidating, unfriendly and tremendously far from the glittering reflection of Notre-dame sur la Seine!

I admire Julie Delpy for having the originality and the courage of ridiculing, so brusquely in fact, the stereotype of stupid American versus civilized French. While she is not defending Americans at all, she repeatedly demonstrates to those who still hold the fictional perception of Parisians that ordinary citizens of Paris could be as – if not more - bigot, stupid, misogynist and vulgar as any ordinary American.

Finally, 2 days in Paris, is a solid, witty and impressively stylish movie that makes you laugh quite frequently and makes you ponder almost as frequent, if not more. It’s a movie to enjoy and to watch over and over again. Well done Julie.