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.

Marion wonders if she should break up first, “before he can,” but is reminded of the torturously painful four stages: “Break up, break down, drink up, fool around.”

It could be a poem or a country song, easily put to music.

Delpy, like her screenplay, is charming, funny, smart, self-effacing, honest, off-the-cuff, clever and creative. For years she was known mostly as “that beautiful French actress,” which is probably why it took so long to do what she had been hoping to pull off ever since she left New York University film school: direct.

And she’s not only the writer-director-star of “2 Days in Paris,” which opens today at the Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights. She also produced the film, edited it, composed much of the music and sings some of the songs.

Shot in a brisk 20 days for a paltry $500,000, “2 Days in Paris” is a comedy about Marion and Jack’s chaotic 48 hours in Paris in which they drop in on Marion’s odd parents and repeatedly run into her ex-boyfriends.

A phone conversation with Delpy, 37, is an energizing experience. It’s punctuated by lots of laughs, hurried digressions, foul-mouthed asides and political jabs at the U.S. president.

Suddenly, there’s a knock at the door of her Los Angeles home. Flowers. She coos and gushes like a ninth-grader (”Oh, they’re sooo pretty, I’m sooo lucky”), while fumbling for the card, trying to guess who sent them (”Who is it? I think I know. I think. Oh! That’s so cute!”).

For the record, Delpy’s flower-appreciation progression goes thusly: “I love flowers. But then I let them rot because I forget that they are there. And then mosquitoes grow in the rotting water. And then I, you know, I end up, like, covered in bites. But I love flowers.”

In her current, bite-free state, Delpy would like to dispel a few misconceptions about her movie.

Even though she and Goldberg previously dated in real life, and even though her parents and cat play her parents and cat in the film, and some of it was shot at her Paris home, and she portrays a French woman who has had oodles of love affairs with a wide variety of men, like Delpy, “2 Days in Paris” is “not at all autobiographical.”

It also is not a follow-up to her two Ethan Hawke walking-talking-discussing-love-and-life movies, “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset,” even though there’s a lot of walking-talking-discussing-love-and-life scenes. Delpy’s distinction: The Hawke collaborations were romantic films; “2 Days in Paris” is a comedy.

Got it.

But there are two other untruths that must be righted, she said. Her film is not an homage to Woody Allen, and it is not anti-Republican.

First, Woody.

“I love Woody Allen’s films, but I’m a huge, like, Bananas,’ Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex,’ Love and Death,’ and Sleeper’ fan. You know, the really goofy, crazy ones?

“It’s weird because some people might think that I studied Annie Hall’ frame by frame, but I didn’t. When I was making the film I was inspired more by — even though I would never try to imitate him because he’s a genius and I could never be even close to him — the Martin Scorsese comedies, like After Hours’ or The King of Comedy.’ Comedies where sometimes it’s too edgy to laugh. It’s like, Is he going to get killed or what?’ ”

In the spirit of French anti-Americanism, several characters in the film throw daggers at George W. Bush and his policies. It’s not overly preachy, but Delpy, who says she was taking chances with her “politically incorrect” film, feels compelled to address it.

“I have friends who are conservative Republicans who like the film because of the humor,” she said. “But if you’re a hard-core Bush believer, if you think Bush is the greatest genius in the history of politics, you will have a problem. People who are still calling french fries freedom fries’ will not be in love with this film.”

Aha. So there is some connection to her real-life political views in “2 Days in Paris.”

“I don’t think my film is at all anti-Republican,” she said. “It has a few bites at Bush, but I think that’s OK. I’m French! It would be science fiction if I liked Bush.”

Source: cleveland.com