Beyond the Multiplex

Julie Delpy on her film "2 Days in Paris" -- and why people are calling her the new Woody Allen (an interview and podcast). Plus: Rosario Dawson lights up a dark thriller.

By Andrew O'Hehir

Read more: Andrew O'Hehir, Paris, Movies, Movie Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Reviews, Beyond the Multiplex, Salon Conversations

Aug. 9, 2007 |

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So far this week, the morbidity and mortality report on major European directors is silent. We'll keep our fingers crossed and turn our attention to the living. Eric Rohmer has just finished another film at age 87, and with luck we'll see it soon. A mere sprat of 76, Jean-Luc Godard continues on his path of willful eccentricity, either as a blindingly original artist or a total irrelevancy (take your pick). Manoel de Oliveira takes the cake, of course. He made his first film in 1931 -- 1931! -- and is planning to shoot another one next year. If he makes it there, he'll be 99 when the cameras begin to roll. (He showed up in Cannes last May, looking healthier than some 60-year-olds.)

Somewhere near the other end of the spectrum, we find two very different French directors, both the same age (which would be 37) and both offering us partly ironic or sardonic visions of Paris, that most filmed and most romance-saturated of cities. Actress Julie Delpy is a smart cookie and showbiz lifer who, to no one's surprise, has finally turned her attention to filmmaking. (She directed a film called "Looking for Jimmy" in 2002, but it remains largely unseen.) She started acting in French movies at age 8, but first attracted notice for her performance in Godard's "Detective," made when she was 14.

If Delpy remains best known to indie-film buffs as the girl Ethan Hawke lets get away after their all-night prowl through Vienna in Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" (and then meets again, nine years later, in "Before Sunset"), that's only one corner of her career. She's worked with Godard, Carlos Saura, Agnieszka Holland, Jim Jarmusch and Krzysztof Kieslowski, appearing in each installment of the Polish filmmaker's great "Three Colors" trilogy. She was in "An American Werewolf in Paris," "But I'm a Cheerleader" and seven episodes of "ER."

If Delpy first got roles for her long blond hair, lithe frame and perfect, translucent skin, what has sustained her through such a varied acting career is the focused wit and energy of her performances. Those attributes are very much on display in "2 Days in Paris," an itchy, uneven but frequently very funny romantic comedy, in which she stars opposite Adam Goldberg. (She also wrote, directed, co-produced and edited the film, along with composing the score.)

Our next witness is writer-director Christophe Honoré, something of a critic's darling in France who has yet to make the slightest impact on American audiences. I'm not sure "Dans Paris," his fourth feature, will do anything to change that. It's an elliptical story of two brothers, their troubled family life and their feckless love affairs; it's difficult to summarize and difficult to love, and it deliberately risks boring or alienating its audience. But Honoré brings a sensual poetry to his films that's rewarding on its own terms. He builds unforgettable moments out of implausible elements, and uses his cast of hot young French talent to delicious effect.

I can draw no plausible connections between two movies set in Paris and Talia Lugacy's Gothic rape-revenge thriller "Descent," except that it too is built around a terrific actor with deep indie roots (in this case, Rosario Dawson) and that Lugacy's good-bad movie is channeling a decadent strain of trashy Euro-art films, or trying to. Dawson's performance is nearly good enough to redeem this trippy, schizophrenic fantasy, but if you think that sounds like a qualified endorsement you'd be right.

Next page: Julie Delpy, the new Woody Allen?