There’s a great moment in Julie Delpy’s “2 Days in Paris” when Marion, a French photographer, is about to have the big, teetering-on-the-edge-of-breakup talk with her high-strung boyfriend, Jack, played by Adam Goldberg.

In a voice-over, Marion steps aside and says, “To sum up the four hours of discussion that followed . . .” For some filmmakers, that would be a cheat, an easy way to cover the gaps in a screenplay with some narration. For Delpy, the writer-director who plays Marion, it’s a lovely, eloquent scene as she sums up the confounding crescendos of love, lust and relationships through a series of funny insights in the style of Woody Allen.

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She’s been writing film scripts for 20 years, and I’m sure every one of them is better that that for “The Invasion” or “The Nanny Diaries” or 90% of the other movies made these days. She’s made films with some of the world’s best directors — Jean-Luc Godard, Leos Carax, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Richard Linklater. She’s got a degree from NYU’s film school and has a dirty mind. So it’s hard to believe that in order to make her first feature “2 Days in Paris” Julie Delpy had to write, direct, edit, compose a soundtrack, tape cables, reduce her co-producer to penury and and put her ex-boyfriend, her parents and her cat in the cast. Is it because she’s French? Because she’s a woman? Here’s her side of the story, the first part of the transcript of the interview you can also find in “Backtalk” in the next issue of the Phoenix.

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Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

I got to talk to Julie Delpy, and if you know who she is, then you probably have a crush on her or did at some point in the last 15 years. If you haven’t ever had a crush on her, I have nothing to say to you. And her work with Richard Linklater on BEFORE SUNRISE and BEFORE SUNSET set off a flurry of young American men bound for Europe looking, well, for her, or a version of her.

Her new film, 2 DAYS IN PARIS, is a twisted and funny version of her persona from those two films, and she does everything in her power to shatter what we think she’s all about. She wrote, directed, produced, stars, and even did much of the music in this film, and the results are hilarious.

Here’s Julie Delpy…

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Julie Delpy is cold. When turning down the air conditioning in a San Francisco hotel suite doesn’t yield immediate relief, she grabs a furry throw blanket off the couch and secures it snuggly over her lap.

The blanket, which she assures me isn’t real fur, will prove to be her only cover-up. Speaking in practically unaccented English, the 37-year-old French actress is disarmingly forthright when describing her struggle to get to direct a feature film - her first, “2 Days in Paris,” opens Friday - and to uphold a moral principle to not sleep her way to the top.

Delpy’s natural beauty has been both an asset and a liability. Her porcelain complexion and fine blond hair are set off this morning by a loden green dress, definitely her color. She has the kind of open face and perfect features that the camera loves, as fans of “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset” - the bittersweet romances she’s best known for in America - can attest. Jean-Luc Godard discovered Delpy when she was 14 and cast her in “Detective,” but her movie career in her native country was stymied by a traumatic experience five years later.
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Thanks to Diana at marieclaire.com for letting us know about their interview with Julie in the latest issue of Marie Claire. Click here or below to read the interview.

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