Day 21/22 - Two Days in Paris (2007)

Before Sunset and Before Sunrise are two of my favorite French films, with two very attractive lovers talking philosophy into the night and then into the morning. The films have a feel of inspired improvisation, which Delpy later claimed was true. Julie Delpy is wonderful in both films. 

With that as a inspiration, I watched Delpy’s comedy Two Days in Paris. What a disappointing difference.

Two Day in Paris plays like Woody Allen’s neuroses  meets the Fockers in Paris. 

An New York based couple, French Marion (a photographer) and Jack (an American interior designer)  return from an unsatisfying trip to Venice to stay two days with her parents in Paris before heading back home. 

Both characters are incredibly whiny. Jack (Adam Goldberg) can’t speak French and complains about the city, Marion's parents, his whole experience. He whines like bad Woody Allen New York Shtick and does the same Allen asides to the audience. Even though Marion is the photographer, Jack has the need to take all the pictures on the trip--perhaps a way to separate himself from the experience or a competition with Marion. One of his early bits is to tell a group of American tourists who are waiting in line for a taxi that they are within a couple of blocks of the Louvre. He sends them off in the wrong direction (he doesn’t know) and is pleased that he has reduced the taxi line.

Marion is the type of person who shares a picture of naked Jack holding balloons with her entire family. Later he finds another exactly posed picture of an earlier boyfriend. She proclaims her fidelity to Jack, but has at least two former boyfriends making advances.

Marion’s parents (played by her real life parents) are played for laughs. They shout at each other, her father says rude things about Jack in French which he doesn’t understand and serves rabbit, including the head and ears.  The father runs an art gallery with sex pictures and his eccentricity is that he constantly keys cars which are parked on the sidewalk. Marion's mother has an obsession with laundry and proclaims to Jack that in 1969 she had an affair with Jim Morrison (Jack had gone to see his grave because that is something a tourist is supposed to do) and then proudly tells him she was among the 343 Bitches (who signed a pledge that they had had an abortion). 

The film is loaded with adult language which seems intended to shock and be funny but which I found rather grating.

I’m afraid I wouldn’t recommend this film. See Before Sunset of  Before Sunrise instead.

Two Days in Paris (2007) ** (Netflix)