2 Days in New York
Few things can screw up the delicate balance of cohabitation like a visit from family, especially when they practically crawl into bed with you. That’s the premise of 2 Days in New York, a bawdy comic bash in which French writer-director- actress Julie Delpy shows how closeness can leave bruises. She plays Marion, a photographer we met in Delpy’s 2 Days in Paris (2007), in which Marion’s brief visit with her French family puts a rift between her and her Gotham guy, Jack (Adam Goldberg). Now Marion pulls a reverse. Her gallery opening sparks a visit from her Paris family, including dad Jeannot (Delpy’s real-life dad, Albert), sister Rose (co-screenwriter Alexia Landeau) and Rose’s loose-cannon boyfriend, Manu (Alex Nahon).
Jack is gone, replaced by Mingus (Chris Rock), a journalist with a radio show and a short fuse when it comes to occupying the cramped space he shares with Marion’s son by Jack and his daughter from a previous relationship. Delpy is boundlessly appealing. And Rock is acerbic fun, notably in the imaginary debates he stages with Obama. But the frenzied cross-cultural gags take the piss out of the real subject: how blood ties can turn love into a battlefield.