2 Days in Paris (2007

Idea: On the way home from a vacation in Italy, Marion (Julie Delpy) and her boyfriend Jack (Adam Goldberg) stop in Paris for two days to meet Marion’s parents (Marie Pillet and Albert Delpy, Julie Delpy’s real life parents) and see the city were Marion grew up before returning to their lives in New York.

I wasn’t sure that I wanted to catch this one in theatres, so I did a little reading before I made up my mind. Critics seemed very keen on the idea that writer and director Delpy, in her feature length debut, made her character the bigger asshole. I’d put it another way, but there really isn’t another word that so perfectly captures the misanthropy and bile that is at the centre of Marion and Jack’s relationship.

It’s not that it doesn’t make for entertaining and occasionally amusing viewing, as it assuredly does. I’m just not sure that I found Marion to be the bigger asshole. Her two biggest flaws are the way she disrespects Jack’s need for privacy in the relationship and the way she deliberately erects a language barrier between everyone else and Jack. Delpy plays it all beautifully, particularly when she becomes convinced that she has an allergic reaction at a party and in a series of tense cab rides.

For all Marion’s flaws, though, nothing about her bothered me quite so much as the way Jack treated Marion. The majority of the tension in the film found in the will-they-or-won’t-they-break-up is based in Jack’s reaction to Marion’s sexual past. He meets approximately three past lovers and decides, based solely in his jealousy, that his girlfriend is a slut. Having had three lovers prior to the age of 33 is hardly worth getting worked up over. And still he does. By the time he accuses her of having anger management and impulse control problems after she justifiably attacks an ex, Jack seemed like the bigger asshole to me.

Still, Goldberg makes Jack a recognizable character, if not a wholly likable one. His discussion with the “fairy” (Daniel Brühl) he meets at a fast food restaurant makes Jack’s emotional baggage crackle with intensity and real hurt. The bond between Marion and Jack may be a tense, brittle one, but it’s also more alive and believable than anything I have seen in recent romantic movies.

I read an interview with Delpy where she confesses that she basically made up Goldberg’s character in the editing room. Between that and her frequent narration, I can’t help wondering what the other movie could have been. B