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Powerful

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

A bilingual cringe comedy about a pair of New Yorkers whose two-year relationship is tested to the breaking point by a European vacation. Comparisons to "Annie Hall" seem inevitable—Delpy's co-star, Adam Goldberg, is like a more robust, tattooed-hipster version of Woody; Delpy's not exactly playing against type as a talky, excitable beauty who's had pretty bad luck with men (we get to meet a few of them). I guess writer-director JD's to be commended for her honesty in portraying both characters through the disillusioned eyes of love gone sour, but past a certain point we didn't find it all that pleasant to watch. Goldberg's character, Jack, is a snide, self-centered wuss who fusses about his migraines and sinuses and has to take cabs everywhere (prob'ly b/c JD has a lot to say about Paris cabdrivers). She tries to level the playing field by making her character, Marion, almost as annoying as Jack. It seems like Marion's freaked out by being back in a scene that she's outgrown: she's felled by a panic attack at an art party, then 86'd from a café for picking a fight with one of her exes, then gets into it with a racist cabby on the way back to her parents' apartment. The couple's terminal meltdown seems to be too painful even for JD herself—she excerpts the climactic scene in pantomime with voice-over... Delpy's obviously a talented filmmaker who's done some great work as an actress for Kieślowski and Richard Linklater, but I didn't think the insights she has to offer here really justify spending 90+ minutes in the company of these foolish, unlikable people. The vignettes of the small-frogs-in-a-small-pond (so to speak) Paris art scene are kind of funny; there's a nice mean-spirited riff on dumbass Da Vinci Codebreakers, a cute scene where Jack bonds with an ecoterrorist in a fast-food place, but all in all, I'd approach this one with caution.

2 DAYS IN Paris isn't going to be the kind of film to win any Oscars; its subject-matter is a familiar one (the American floundering in a foreign culture), and the conclusion equally predictable. Nonetheless Julie Delpy's film does have its incidental pleasures, notably two winning central performances from Delpy herself as Marion and Adam Goldberg (as Jack). Although different as chalk from cheese, they nonetheless try to sustain their love-affair in the face of almost insuperable obstacles - Marion's overbearing, non-English-speaking parents, a bohemian ex-boyfriend of Marion (Daniel Bruhl), plus a host of other impediments - imagined or otherwise - that befall Jack's stay in Paris. The film takes some predictable potshots at Americans abroad; their monolingualism, their expectations that everyone should think like them, irrespective of cultural differences; and their obsession with private as opposed to public issues. On the other hand the French are not immune from criticism either; Lukas (Bruhl) is portrayed as a libertine paying scant regard for such things as reliability or privacy. The film's conclusion is predictable enough, with the lovers vowing to separate yet unable to do so, but it has been an enjoyable trip along the way.

After seeing this movie for the third time, and laughing more and more with each viewing, I think I can officially say that I love Julie Delpy. In fact, I will go a step further and announce that she's one of the most talented and interesting artists around. She really can do it all--write, direct, sing, and play guitar. Hell, she even grows old gracefully. Two Days in Paris is hilarious, smart, offensive, dark, and completely ridiculous (see Adam Goldberg) in the best possible way. It's such a simple story, but she brings out the humor so organically, and that's why, like a vintage Woody Allen movie, it doesn't lose its raw pizazz.

Impossible to watch without entertaining the ghost of Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise/Before Sunset). Indeed Delpy clearly has the aesthetic, subject material and script content in her own mind as well. It is a great testament to her that this is an idiosyncratic, coherent and self- contained rom-com in the metropolitan tradition of Annie Hall.It helps that she persuaded Adam Goldberg to play her lover. He's a fine actor (look no further than Linklater's own Dazed and Confused, no less) but here he's careful not to overplay the Jewish weltschmerz. He's attentive to the chief protagonist being the relationship that the two principals have and not each of them individually. Delpy also does a fine job given that she's clearly shuttling between different ends of the camera - not too 'kooky'.The ensemble cast is well taken without reserve, all creating striking but not overpowering characters along the way. The film is shot largely hand-held and jumps through the episodes with an energy that goes with the purported watershed age of Jack and Marion (they're meant to be 35). I liked it very much. 7.5/10