The ultra-talented French actress Julie Delpy continues to grow most impressively in her new film 2 Days in New York, which she directs, and which co-stars Chris Rock in a much more than comic role. Rock plays Mingus, who lives with Marion (Delpy) and each of their two kids from other relationships. The situation is a doozy: Marion’s dad, sister, and sister’s boyfriend (who’s also an ex-boyfriend of Marion’s) visit New York to attend a gallery show of Marion’s photographs and to meet Mingus. They all hole up in Marion and Mingus’ small apartment. Cross-cultural chaos ensues.
The film’s a small riot. Frenzied, hilarious shenanigans follow Marion’s father Jeannot (played by Delpy’s real-life father Albert Delpy), her sister Rose (Alexia Landeau, who cowrote the screenplay with Delpy), and the boyfriend Manu (Alex Nahon, also co-credited with the screenplay). They all co-starred in Delpy’s 2007 prequel 2 Days in Paris, where an American boyfriend (Adam Goldberg) descends into the family’s inner sanctum. Here they invade America. The uber-earthy, often outrageous Jeannot arrives at the airport with unpasteurized cheeses taped to his body, Rose walks around the apartment in various states of undress, and Manu is about as gruff and inappropriate as a Sasha Baron Cohen character. Rock’s character changes from an immune doesn’t-bother-me to a frustrated center of gravity going askew, to a guy who complains in monologues to a cardboard cutout of Barack Obama that’s a life-size piece of furniture in his study. Finally Mingus, who’s a Village Voice writer and radio talk show host, resorts to describing his significant other’s crazy family to his radio audience. Comics who can play the serious role (Robin Williams, Adam Sandler) bolster their acting repertoire while often surprising their fans. Here Rock plays it three-quarters straight and it’s perfectly nuanced. The Franco-American tensions are mussed up even further given Rock’s additional fish-out-of-water role as a black boyfriend.
Marion tries to keep her family in tow as they proceed to spread havoc in Marion’s building and elsewhere. She has her own photography show to worry about and there’s an odd auction which I’ll leave undescribed except to say it eventually involves Vincent Gallo, who plays himself (wait, doesn’t he always?) A scene with Delpy and a particularly persnickety art critic ends poignantly if chaotically. Dylan Baker’s around as a neighbor caught in Rose’s web of possible seduction.
America and France, comic opposites framed by the additional presence of a Chris Rock. There would be plenty here if Delay left it at that. She manages, however to tie in a warm and effervescent turn to the more serious once she brings to the film the unexpected theme of the passing of her mom, the French actress Marie Pillet. The more serious Delpy reached a crescendo in the excellent Richard Linklater films, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, the latter which Delpy co-wrote the screenplay. Here she manages to combine madcap Woody Allen-esque comedy with the candor of self-realized semi-biography. Delpy, who now lives in L. A., keeps a dual citizenship. Amidst the laughter brought on here there lurks an outside-the-box approach to filmmaking, full of a robust duality all its own.
4 Wild Francophiles (out of 5)