2 Days In Paris

There’s a whiff of Woody Allen about proceedings in Julie Delpy’s latest comedy, which sees a couple struggle with their relationship on a weekend in Paris.

Delpy plays Marion, a ditzy French photographer in the Diane Keaton mould who has been dating bearded quasi-hypochondriac Jack (Adam Goldberg, channelling the downbeat spirit of Allen) for a couple of years. After taking a holiday in Venice the pair decide to spend some time with Marion’s folks, setting the stage for plenty of situational humour.

Jack barely speaks the language and is quickly overwhelmed by Marion’s family, who poke fun at him in French, and produce a picture of him in a compromising position that Marion has sent them, ensuring that the rest of the visit will have a farcical edge. Jack can’t even cope with the apartment they’re staying in – “a petri-dish for allergens” – and when they meet one of Marion’s ex-beaus in the street, he seems just a bit too keen.

The screwball-style comedy mounts as Jack becomes increasingly jealous of the attention Marion is getting from another man from her past at a party and has to attend an insufferably avant garde art exhibition hosted by Marion’s dad.

In the first part of the film, the script zips along with plenty of laughs but the biggest problem is that the characters, in particular Marion, become increasingly difficult to like. She is, it seems, a woman close to the edge but it’s hard to stay with a comedy when neither character holds your sympathy. There are contradictions, too. On the one hand Jack seems hygiene-obssessed and yet, when we see him take his shirt off, he is covered in tattoos – which must surely be totally out of character. Equally, Marion is supposed to be slightly bonkers, yet her voice-over seems incredibly cool and collected by comparison.

Talking of the voice-over, there is far too much of it, particularly in the last 15 minutes of the film when things seem to simply run out of steam. Though it definitely has its moments, the laughs don’t quite last the duration.