“2 DAYS IN PARIS” with Julie Delpy, Adam Goldberg, Albert Delpy and Marie Pillet. Rated R (for language, some sexual content and nudity). Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes.

3 Stars

Thoroughly amusing, at times annoying and often hilarious are three ways to describe the French actress Julie Delpy’s film “2 Days in Paris.”

One thing it definitely does is accurately capture that point when a couple really start getting on each other’s nerves.

The entrancing star of Richard Linklater’s City of Lights art-house fave “Before Sunset” wrote, directed, stars in, edited, co-produced, wrote the score for and even sings a song for her movie, which also stars her real-life parents, both professional actors.

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Maybe it’s a good thing that Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke didn’t end up together at the end of “Before Sunrise,” and maybe didn’t at the end of “Before Sunset” either. Skip ahead to the next day, and the perfect transatlantic couple could have ended up like the bickering pair in Delpy’s wry filmmaking debut, “2 Days in Paris.”

If “Before Sunset” gave us Paris in all its Bohemian romance, Delpy almost gleefully shows us the dingy, crabby flip side of the city here. And if “Sunset” and “Sunrise” showed us the joy of two people connecting, “Paris” gives us two lovers continually pried apart by cultural differences and their own raging neuroses.

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Man, that Julie Delpy can do it all.

Not only does the French actress play the romantic lead in her latest film, “2 Days in Paris,” but she also directed the picture. And wrote it. And edited it. And composed the music for it. And hawks Raisinets before each showing.

And she has an often-charming, if sometimes rambling, romantic comedy to show for it all.

It tells the story of Marion (Delpy) and Jack (Adam Goldberg), who have just wrapped up a trip to Venice that would have been romantic if not for the decidedly unromantic protestations of Jack’s digestive system. But rather than end their trip on that gurgling note, they’re going to stop for a two-day visit to Paris, Marion’s hometown, before returning to New York.

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Julie Delpy charmed her way through “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset” playing a lovely but conflicted young woman. She repeats it in “2 Days in Paris,” her first film as a writer-director.

Delpy sets her project on a fast track as her character, Marion, and her boyfriend, fresh from a vacation in Venice, stop over in Paris on the way home to New York City to pick up her cat. Trouble ensues almost immediately. The aging puss has put on 10 pounds, thanks to a switch in diet from dry food to foie gras.

Initially, one wonders how she has chosen Jack as the probable love of her life. He is a hypochondriac and sees terrorists around every corner, so that makes taking buses or subways out of the question. Day one brings more problems, from her mother, a hippie transformed to ordinary housewife and her father, an artist who specializes in nudes and challenging the boyfriend on celebrated writers.

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The last time I laughed so hard at a movie, it was Nigel Tufnel telling us his amplifier went to 11.

Most comedies these days bring us a smile or have one or two jokes at most that people talk about for weeks, like Ben Stiller’s hair gel, but it’s a rare film that makes you slap your knee or suck wind trying to recover from a fit of cachinnation. This Is Spinal Tap was one; Julie Delpy’s 2 Nights in Paris is another.

Not that it’s about heavy metal music, of course, but the arguments her Marion has with boyfriend Jack (Adam Goldberg) seem to dial up to 11 anyway.

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