Adam Goldberg and Adam Julie Delpy play lovers having a rough two days in Paris
2 DAYS IN PARIS (Julie Delpy, 2007)
Columbia University, Low Library Steps
535 West 116th St. at Broadway
Thursday, September 8, free, 7:30
www.frenchculture.org
www.2daysinparisthefilm.com
Julie Delpy’s delightful debut, 2 Days in Paris, is a true DIY indie, with Delpy serving as writer, director, editor, star, composer, soundtrack performer, and one of the producers. Delpy plays Marion, a flitty Frenchwoman who decides to bring her boyfriend of two years, Jack (a heavily tattooed Adam Goldberg), to spend two days with in her hometown in Paris as a stopover on their way from Venice to their apartment in New York City. But spending forty-eight hours with Marion’s family (Delpy’s real-life parents, Albert Delpy and Marie Pillet, and sister, Alexia Landeau) and bumping into a seemingly endless stream of Marion’s former boyfriends while not understanding a word anyone is saying might be a bit much for Jack, an interior designer whose own insides are rife with stomach problems and migraines. 2 Days in Paris is Delpy’s Annie Hall, an engaging film filled with slapstick humor, inventive characters, and underlying truths about love and life. 2 Days in Paris is being shown on September 8 at Columbia’s Low Memorial Library steps, concluding the Films on the Green: Summer Vacation series, which previously screened Jacques Deray’s Swimming Pool in Central Park, Pascal Thomas’s Towards Zero in Riverside Park, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt in Tompkins Square Park, among other special free outdoor presentations.
On the verge of being forced out of the company he has dedicated his life to, National Shoes executive Kingo Gondo’s (Toshirō Mifune) life is thrown into further disarray when kidnappers claim to have taken his son, Jun (Toshio Egi), and are demanding a huge ransom for his safe return. But when Gondo discovers that they have mistakenly grabbed Shinichi (Masahiko Shimazu), the son of his chauffeur, Aoki (Yutaka Sada), he at first refuses to pay. But at the insistence of his wife (Kyogo Kagawa), the begging of Aoki, and the advice of police inspector Taguchi (Kenjiro Ishiyama), he reconsiders his decision, setting in motion a riveting police procedural that is filled with tense emotion. Loosely based on Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novel King’s Ransom, High and Low is divided into two primary sections: the first half takes place in Gondo’s luxury home, orchestrated like a stage play as the characters are developed and the plan takes hold. The second part of the film follows the police, under the leadership of Chief Detective Tokura (Tatsuya Nakadai), as they hit the streets of the seedier side of Yokohama in search of the kidnappers. Known in Japan as Tengoku to Jigoku, which translates as Heaven and Hell, High and Low is an expert noir, a subtle masterpiece that tackles numerous socioeconomic and cultural issues as Gondo weighs the fate of his business against the fate of a small child; it all manages to feel as fresh and relevant today as it probably did back in the ’60s.
When a pair of disaffected Parisians, Arthur (Claude Brasseur) and Franz (Sami Frey), meet an adorable young woman, Odile (Anna Karina), in English class, they decide to team up and steal a ton of money from a man living in Odile’s aunt’s house. As they meander through the streets of cinematographer Raoul Coutard’s black-and-white Paris, they talk about English and wealth, dance in a cafe while director Jean-Luc Godard breaks in with voice-over narration about their character, run through the Louvre in record time, and pause for a near-moment of pure silence. Godard throws in plenty of commentary on politics, the cinema, and the bourgeoisie in the midst of some genuinely funny scenes. Band of Outsiders is no ordinary heist movie; based on Dolores Hitchens’s novel Fool’s Gold, it is the story of three offbeat individuals who just happen to decide to attempt a robbery while living their strange existence, as if they were outside from the rest of the world. The trio of ne’er-do-wells might remind Jim Jarmusch fans of the main threesome from Stranger Than Paradise (1984), except Godard’s characters are more aggressively persistent. One of Godard’s most accessible films, Band of Outsiders will be playing a one-week engagement at Film Forum September 7-13, with no screenings on September 11.
