2 Days in Paris.

"Julie Delpy's directorial debut 2 Days in Paris unavoidably invites comparisons to Before Sunset, as it too focuses on a talkative Franco-American couple as they navigate the ups and downs of their relationship during a brief stay in the titular metropolis," concedes Nick Schager at Slant. "But despite the superficial similarities of both films, Delpy's romantic comedy (heavy on the comedy) is a far more prickly piece of chatty cinema, delivering acerbic wit and antagonistic conflict via the 48-hour visit to Paris by Marion (Delpy) and Jack (Adam Goldberg), whose two-year-old coupling has been increasingly on the rocks since their preceding, miserable holiday in Venice."

"The movie suffers terribly of course from the inevitable comparisons to Before Sunrise/Sunset, but in all fairness to Delpy, show me a film that wouldn't," writes Benjamin Strong in the L Magazine.

Updated through 8/11.

"Perhaps unconsciously, [Deply's] performance here is a riff on the Diane Keaton who sailed through early Woody Allen," suggests Anthony Lane in the New Yorker. "[W]atch her in the opening scene, with frizzy hair and spectacles, and, beside her, Adam Goldberg firing off anti-Republican gags and looking just like Tony Roberts in Annie Hall, with added tattoos. Anyone hoping that 2 Days in Paris will revisit such peppy romance, however, will be frustrated."

New York's David Edelstein spots the Annie Hall connection, too, and has a recommendation: "The movie should be seen with a large, responsive audience—the better to live with it in the moment instead of worrying about where it's going." And Logan Hill talks with Delpy.

Kristin Hohenadel profiles Delpy for the New York Times.

Updates: Sunset and Paris aren't that much alike, either, argues Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog: "Linklater's film is a verite-style portrait of a relationship at its most magical (and least sustainable); Delpy's is an almost Brechtian analysis of what happens to a relationship after that magic hour. It's far from a perfect film, and in fact at times it feels rather schizophrenic. But somehow, in between fits of broad comedy and Godardian self-referentiality (the first shot of the film even offers a wink at Godard's 'girl and a gun'), Delpy manages to pull off a spot-on portrayal of what it feels like to be in an adult relationship on the brink. It's certainly messier than Linklater's tightly-orchestrated symphony of long shots, but to me, the fact you can all but see Delpy's fingerprints on the screen is extremely appealing."

Ray Pride meets Delpy and writes at indieWIRE, "I tell her I'm afraid her cranky, political comedy is going to be dubbed Annie Hall if it were directed from Annie Hall's own perspective, with its distinctively female fondness for neurotic banter and bicker. 'No! I like that!' she says with a bright smile."

Updates, 8/7: Writing at indieWIRE, Kristi Mitsuda finds that the film's "dissonance" with Sunset "seems deliberate; a way of stripping away the lush romanticization of Paris and love - between two impossibly captivating human beings - found in Linklater's film, and countering it with a coarser representation of both the city and the day-to-day in the life of a two-year-old couple flecked with numerous flaws. 2 Days seeks to inject the unrulier aspects of relationships into the equation, and has some nice qualities - the writing can be witty, and occasionally Delpy's charmingly off-kilter sensibility shines through - but it's a mess."

"It's not as Before Sunset as the title might seem, since language barriers, overbearing folks, flirty ex-beaus and other annoyances turn what might've been Meet the Fockers into a biting bicker-fest of the Woody Allen variety," writes Aaron Hillis, introducing his interview with Delpy for IFC News. "And of course, it's political. Considering that two of Delpy's early screen roles were in Jean-Luc Godard's Détective and King Lear, it's not surprising that her first narrative feature would be filled with thinly disguised references to her personal beliefs."

"Romance is easy when you've got 12 hours in Vienna and the sky's lit by carnival lights," writes Jim Ridley, recalling Before Sunrise in the Voice. "What happens when you've spent the past few days in Venice with explosive diarrhea, and the next 48 hours brings only language barriers, close quarters with the parents, and a virtual Yellow Pages of ex-lovers?... As writer-director, Delpy makes some of the usual first-feature mistakes," but "she has an unusually playful style for an actor turned filmmaker."

Updates, 8/8: Sara Vilkomerson talks with Goldberg for the New York Observer.

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with Delpy "about her transition to low-budget filmmaking, working with Kieślowski, and her father's tendency to stare at firemen's butts."

Updates, 8/9: Geoffrey Macnab talks with Delpy for the Independent, as do Erica Abeel, for indieWIRE, and Jennifer Merin, for the New York Press.

"As Delpy observes in our highly entertaining conversation at a New York hotel bar, neither Jack nor Marion is all that likable a character," writes Andrew O'Hehir in Salon. "But Delpy's writing is sharply observed and often hilarious, and her own performance as the perennially enraged Marion - whom she says was inspired by Robert De Niro's Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull - is one of her most memorable. Most of all, there's an active filmmaking intelligence at work in 2 Days in Paris, one that's going to learn from the experience and move onward."

"Though the wrap-up to the film and the couple's widening rift is decidedly bobbled with an uneasy preponderance of voice-over, it's nice to see that even the healthiest, snappiest cynic can't help concluding that Paris is indeed for lovers," writes Michelle Orange at the Reeler.

Updates, 8/10: "As the movie pores microscopically over Marion and Jack's relationship, it reveals more specific information about their habits, tastes, personality traits and emotional and sexual chemistry than any film about a relationship that I can recall," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "[E]ven [Woody] Allen and [Diane] Keaton's funniest romps came with a protective layer of witty shtick; they never gave you the intimate sense of actually having to live with them night and day."

"2 Days in Paris doesn't quite meet the Before Sunset standard of intricate, subtle dialogue and sharp psychological insight - but then again, neither do many movies this side of Eric Rohmer," writes Slate's Dana Stevens. "That this one is even bearable is a surprise; that it's occasionally insightful and hilarious is a treat."

"What interests [Delpy] are not the superficial differences between people from different countries - your skinned rabbit is my tourist in a Bush/Cheney T-shirt, and so forth - but the way in which the distances between people, genders and cultures (the very distances we rely on to grant us the perspective needed to see how completely insane other people, genders, cultures really are) seem to shift constantly according to circumstances," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times.

Akiva Gottlieb interviews Delpy for Nerve: "In a conversational sparring match, she's clearly in her element, equal parts voluble, engaging and confrontational. Not to mention, based on the evidence in her new film 2 Days in Paris, more than a little crazy."

Updates, 8/11: "[W]here Linklater was interested in sense-heightening instances of human interaction, the gifts and ravages of time, the delicacy of living in the moment, Delpy is unapologetically crass, structurally clumsy, and cheerfully indelicate," writes Michael Koresky at Reverse Shot. "If Linklater's guiding force was Eric Rohmer, Delpy seems to be more stuck in the functionality of contemporary French comedy."

"They both seem a little neurotic and a little self-centered, but mostly, after two years together, they've apparently run out of reasons to be kind," writes Tasha Robinson at the AV Club. "And while their give-and-take is almost playful, both actors put an uncomfortable edge on it, fit to keep viewers squirming with alternate waves of sympathy and disgust."

"Maybe we still want the Seine to sparkle in the sunlight as it always has," suggests Richard Schickel for Time. "Maybe we hope Gene Kelly will still come tapping down the Montmartre sidewalks as once he did. If that's the case then 2 Days in Paris will not be your dish of Pernod. But if a dose of skepticism (see Jack trying to come to grips with rabbit stew) and multilingual frenzy (dealing with a vegan saboteur in a fast food restaurant) does not seem entirely amiss to you, this anti romantic and anti-comic - it's not as funny as Delpy seems to think it is - movie may appeal to the dark side of your immune system."

Online listening tip. Delpy's a guest on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Posted by dwhudson at August 6, 2007 5:52 AM