Julie Delpy & Alexia Landeau Talk "2 Days in New York" during Tribeca Film Fest

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Interviews

Published on Monday, 07 May 2012 03:39

Written by Laura Blum

What happened to French politesse? Judging by that country’s presidential debates preceding François Hollande’s triumph over Nicolas Sarkozy – and by the Gallic gall featured in 2 Days in New York -- it’s been replaced by rudeness and bickering. Could the barbarous nation could use a little “civilizing mission” itself these days?

As its title hints, the new comedy from French actress-director-writer-musician Julie Delpy presents a sequel to 2 Days in Paris. 

Now settled on this side of the Atlantic, Marion (Delpy) has jettisoned Jack (Adam Goldberg) for journalist and radio talk show host Mingus (Chris Rock), who joins her in raising their respective offspring.

Delpy’s bespeckled Botticelli blonde is the portrait of Woody Allen as she revels in neurosis and mid-30s malaise. No longer footloose and fancy free against Europe’s sunrises and sunsets, she grapples with post-partum flab, New York rent and the care and upkeep of monogamous love.

The Paris-born, Los Angeles-based multi-talent became an indie name the U.S. thanks to her onscreen fling with Ethan Hawke in Richard Linkater's Before Sunrise and Before Sunset; the latter also earned her an Oscar nomination as co-screenwriter.

Those who recall Marion’s antic family from 2 Days in Paris can only imagine what their impending visit may portend on the eve of her big photo exhibition at a Manhattan gallery. Marion’s stress levels are already primed by her show’s autobiographical theme – the waning of romantic intimacy – and by the auction that will take place at the opening: selling her soul to an anonymous buyer as a “conceptual art piece.”

Early on, a scene at airport customs forecasts the turbulent two days to come. Mourning his wife's (and Julie’s mother’s) recent death, père Jeannot embraces the pleasures of the flesh wherever he can. Yet when he and his daughter’s boyfriend Manu are caught trying to bring in 30 pounds of cheese and sausage, they must forfeit the stash, if not the stench.

Albert Delpy, Julie’s real-life actor father, plays Jeannot; story contributor Alex Nahon plays Manu; and co-screenwriter Alexia Landeau plays his girlfriend and Marion’s sister Rose.

Cultures will clash and sensibilities will be skewered as these French gourmands indulge their unbridled appetites for sex & drugs & croissant rolls.

“Meet the parents” is hardly a new formula. But in today’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn-informed zeitgeist, this Rabelaisian farce gives puritan America a spectacle to gasp at, to feel vindicated by and to crack up over.

Mingus is similarly vexed by the alien invaders. This canny conceit positions him as an agent for the audience’s grins and chagrins. But not even Chris Rock’s improvised tête-à-tête with a life-sized Barack Obama cut-out could substitute for a parley with the film’s creators, off-screen.

Two opportunities bobbed up during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, where 2 Days in New York screened. First, Delpy surfaced at the Apple Store (West 14th Street) for a "Meet the Filmmakers" session co-presented with Indiewire.

And shortly after, a one-on-one took place with Landeau, who had also collaborated on 2 Days in Paris.

What nudged Delpy to do a sequel?

The idea of a “reverse shot” began to gel some eight months after the first film was released, she told the Tribeca crowd. Having explored the “fish out of water” theme through an “American in Paris,” now the Paris-born, Los Angeles-based filmmaker sought to train her lens on a couple juggling more adult challenges such as kids, blended families and careers.

“The American is now in his environment, but still, when the French show up, it affects him,” she said. Delpy also clarified, though, that the cross-cultural divide offered a way to explore relationship tensions in general. “How do you stay with people? You have to constantly compromise. It takes a lot of work.”

The brief was to craft a comedy from these nagging issues.

2 Days in New York marks the filmmaker's fourth feature. Her 17th-century biopic La Comtesse/The Countess came out in France in 2010, followed the next year by 70s nostalgia riff Le Skylab. Add to that the birth of her now three-year-old son Leo and the death of her real-life mother Marie, and it’s understandable why she wanted to bring some levity to her storytelling.

Take for instance the puppet show that brackets 2 Days in New York. Its pastel pluck allows Marion to memorialize her mother on a light enough note to support the film’s Grand Guignol tone. (And no, it wasn’t a wink to the similar device featured in Jean Renoir’s La Chienne, confirmed Landeau.)

The enlightened French and their veiled racism towards Mingus supply a running joke, especially until Manu gets deported for toking up. That the Chris Rock character is the squarest of the bunch is another good one.

Delpy revealed that she had long hoped to work with the standup comedian and actor and “wanted him to play something different from what he's done before.” As she put it, “That's why he signed on, too.”

In fashioning the Brooklynite’s lines, Delpy channeled her “inner Chris Rock.” Though the film is almost entirely scripted, Rock was encouraged to ad-lib his Obama scene à la De Niro’s Rupert Pupkin confiding in Jerry Lewis cut-out Jerry Langford in The King of Comedy.

Per Landeau, another conscious movie reference was the Carnaval scene from Black Orpheus. In 2 Days in New York, Marion runs scared through a Halloween parade. Though she doesn’t yet know that she's pregnant, she’s aware of feeling woozy and out of sorts. “It’s like the Day of the Dead, a time when all the ghosts come out,” said Landeau, noting, “And Marion has just sold her soul.”

“What does it mean to buy a soul? Do we have a have a soul? What is a soul? What is commerce?” Landeau recited a litany of questions that fueled the film’s philosophical time-out with the mystery acquirer of Marion’s soul. (Spoiler alert: Vincent Gallo, in a show-stopping cameo, did the dubious deed.) “It was sort of a parenthesis in the film; we weren't even sure it was going to stay…it was making the film sink tonally a little bit,” Landeau mused.

Happily, they didn’t or couldn’t resist temptation. As Landeau revealed, the inspiration for this transaction came when she stumbled on an ad for Gallo’s online auctioning of his sperm: "Win Vincent Gallo's Sperm on ebay!”

“Vincent, the writer, director, actor guitar seller, photographer, sperm donor…he’s emblematic of New York, and he was buying a piece of [Marion]. Kudos to Vincent for agreeing to spoof himself,” she said.

Delpy similarly deserves a nod for her self-parody as a neurotic. She freely copped to her identification with Woody Allen, and gleefully itemized why. “I’m obsessed with death, as he is. I’m obsessed with talking about relationships and love. And I’m a bit of a hypochondriac.”

Delpy grew up going to the movies with her actor parents, who were big Woody Allen fans. She was also “dragged…backstage [at their productions] since they didn't have money for a nanny.” However loopy or unconventional, Delpy’s parents loom large in her creative cosmos, and her affection for them is unmistakable.

It’s this warm, pumping heart that lifts 2 Days in New York above the caviling fray. “The dad's a big pig,” to quote Landeau, “but the film also explores Marion's loyalty and the father-daughter bond.”

And evidently the mother-daughter bond as well. One interpretation would have it that the dearly departed takes flight in the form of a Central Park pigeon who’s still protecting her daughter and family from those who may fail to appreciate their radiant souls.

Said Landeau, “Ideally Marion would like to emulate her parents' stability -- it's aspirational. Her growth is that it takes work and commitment to stay. Even if you're fighting and it's not always perfect, you stick it out. Marion and Mingus are going to have a child of their own. She picks his hand; symbolically it's a conscious choice.”

In two words, 2 Days in New York is a serious comedy.

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