The Thousands

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?