With an upcoming work trip to Milwaukee bearing down on me, I decided to escape to Paris for two days. Actually I was only there for 96 minutes this afternoon, thanks to miracles of modern cinema. I think Two Days in Paris is the first Julie Delpy movie I’ve seen. She was second of Kieslowski’s blue-white-red films (I only saw the last), and also in the Sunrise/Sunset movies with the icky Ethan Hawke. 2DiP is a really funny (laugh out loud and sometimes squirmy) look at a couple who have perhaps been on holiday too long and possibly nearing the end of their relationship. Delpy’s real life parents play the crazy dsyfunctional parents in the film, and I was constantly wondering how much of familial funk on display was real. Adam Goldberg (her real ex) plays her annoyingly neurotic boyfriend. The movie picks up after they’ve just returned from a “romantic” vacation in Venice and are stopping in Paris for a couple of days before heading back to NYC.
The little I’ve seen of Goldberg makes me think he is very much like the characters he usually plays (a little crazy, and very caught up in his own issues). Kind of like the way you know Vince Vaughn can really work a nerve (and hey, Mr. Peter Falk confirmed this in an interview after Made was released). But I digress…the movie reminded me how Paris can be beautiful (and as Goldberg’s character says: “This is not Paris. This is hell.”) and hellish all at the same time.
The characters in 2DiP experienced things very similar to my first and second trips to the city of love: 1) extreme weirdness on the Metro (in my case it was a crazy bag lady pointing me out to the police while screaming “noir noir!” across the platform. I didn’t oblige a request for money, 2) going to Pere Lachaise for kicks, stumbling on to some nutty ritual stuff happening at Jim Morrison’s grave and then getting scolded by the gendarmes for leaning against a tombstone…did I mention the nutty ritual stuff happening before we arrived? 3) Americans not on their best behavior (there is a hilarious scene between Goldberg and some expats wearing Bush T-shirts). If you think I’m kidding, David Sedaris captured more of the same in an essay that appeared in “Me Talk Pretty One Day”. But remembering going local in Paris and wandering around the markets, finding a quiet spot to enjoy a glass of wine, or going to my favorite spot in Monmartre makes me forget the bad stuff of travel lore. Hope to get back there soon. Until then, I’ll have a day hike in Coventry next weekend, Milwaukee (if you know of cool stuff to do there please please share!) in a couple of weeks, tix to see Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings in November, and possibly a jaunt to Reykjavik in December.
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