By Steve Snyder

One gets the feeling that Julie Delpy’s mind is a bustling universe. In her two most popular films, 1995’s “Before Sunrise” and 2004’s “Before Sunset” — the latter of which she also helped to write — the story was set around little more than a non-stop conversation, at first during an all-night talk between Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in a moonlit Vienna, and later during a 90-minute afternoon stroll through the streets of Paris.

Abandoning any traditional notion of plot, “Sunrise” and “Sunset” were steeped in the thoughts, quirks and flaws of its characters, in the rare, real-time back-and-forth between two would-be lovers with enough thoughts on their minds to fill a full length feature. And in her latest film, “2 Days In Paris,” it’s much the same scenario: A woman and her boyfriend (this time played by Adam Goldberg), walking and talking, bickering and bantering, romancing and recoiling. And once again, the movie builds to a moment that challenges their — not to mention our — standard, sentimental assumptions about the realities of love.
The film was something of a passion project for the 37-year-old actress. While she merely acted in “Sunrise,” and went on to help write “Sunset,” there doesn’t seem to be an aspect of production that she didn’t wrap her hands around in regards to “2 Days In Paris.” Not only writing and starring in the film, Delpy also directs, edits and composes the film’s music — breaking out with a tour de force accomplishment that instantly establishes Delpy as a considerable filmmaker.

In “2 Days,” she precariously walks that fine line between farce, romance and realist travelogue. In some ways, the movie wants to have its cake and eat it too, striving to be not just a sometimes-comic, sometimes-tragic snapshot of a relationship stuck at a crossroads, but also a documentary-style, day-by-day chronicling of a vacation gone awry, a la “Before Sunset.” For this film to work as well it does, Delpy had to unearth just the right balance of humor, hope and humility — and as a first-time filmmaker, and more importantly as a first-time editor, she has clearly achieved something of a minor miracle.

As is so often the case with such dialogue-driven affairs, the plot is fairly simple. Marion (Delpy) is a French-born American who, on her way home from a vacation, stops by her homeland to introduce her family to her boyfriend, Jack (Goldberg). But once on the ground in Paris, Jack, who doesn’t speak a lick of French, starts to feel the pressures of an outsider. Unable to communicate with Marion’s family, confronted repeatedly by street-side reunions with Marion’s ex-boyfriends who seem to pop up at every turn, and seemingly exhausted at the end of a vacation he wishes were already over, the tensions boil over into one of those defining confrontations that seem at some point to challenge every long-term relationship. In the middle of Paris, under a midday sun, thousands of miles from where their love first blossomed, Marion and Jack storm away separately, with the looming question of whether they are right for each other.

There’s something good and bad, sweet and stubborn, about both these people, and what “2 Days in Paris” amounts to is an accidental revelation — a moment of self-discovery that comes when Marion and Jack least expect it. On vacation, with a man she thinks is “the one,” Marion’s bubble bursts and the harsh glare of reality comes crashing in. On both sides of the camera, Julie Delpy proves that she knows a thing or two about pain and uncertainty, about unrealized dreams and broken hearts. And only by understanding all that can you fully recognize true love.