2 Days In Paris

By: Martyn Pedler
Date: 28th Nov 07
Format: Cinema
Mood: Nostalgic

What:
2 Days In Paris

When:
It's released Dec 26 but thanks to Hopscotch we have a special preview, Thursday December 6 at 6.45pm (see win)

Where:
Cinema Nova, 380 Lygon St, Carlton

Watch the trailer:
Here

Win:
Join us at the special preview! Go on, it's going to be awesome. We'll send you a double pass, a lot of people are going to win. To go into the draw, email win@threethousand.com.au with the subject line ‘more romance for slackers'

You've probably seen Richard Linklater's hit romance-for-slackers, Before Sunrise - Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke sharing One Perfect Night in Vienna. It even earned a sequel, Before Sunset, picking up on the characters' lives a decade later.

Now Julie Delpy writes, directs and stars in 2 Days In Paris. It's impossible not to squint and see her as a thinly-veiled version of Celine from Before Sunrise, here bringing her American boyfriend to Paris to meet both her parents and her seemingly endless parade of previous sexual entanglements.

There's an unnecessary voiceover for the first fifteen minutes that suggests this'll be sub-Amelie at best. Once it disappears, though, the film reveals a bittersweet authenticity to anyone who has fumbled through cultural differences, forced polite smiles when unable to speak the language, or realised their partner was someone completely different before they met. (Or maybe just crushed a little too hard on Julie Delpy as a teenager.)

It's rough round the edges, very much a low-budget first film, but if this is Delpy's unofficial answer to Before Sunrise, it's also posing a question: how do our romantic pasts and uncertain futures short-circuit that One Perfect Night?