News

The Countess

February 2009: French actress Julie Delpy resurrects the specter of a blood-drenched countess in her third outing as director to recast one of Europe's most celebrated villains as a desperate player in a Greek tragedy. In "The Countess," Delpy revisits the tale of Hungarian noblewoman Erzebet Bathory, best remembered as one of history's most prolific serial killers, who was walled up in her castle after being accused of murdering hundreds of young women.

Bathory has inspired dozens of films and novels as well as a host of songs by heavy metal bands. Many of them focus on a legend surrounding the countess that she bathed in the blood of virgins in the belief it would grant her eternal youth. Presenting her movie at this year's Berlin film festival, Delpy said she wanted to get away from elements which have traditionally been associated with the gory countess.

"I thought her character was a good subject for a drama more than a horror film," said Delpy, 39, who plays Bathory in the film. "I wanted to make it more like a Greek tragedy with obsession and love, and being abandoned and betrayed."

Delpy also wrote the screenplay for the Franco-German co-production, having worked on the script for seven years. The 94-minute film, which was shot partly on location in old castles and churches in southern Germany, focuses on Bathory's struggle to retain the affections of her younger lover Istvan Thurzo, played by German actor Daniel Bruehl. Driven to extremes by her desire for Thurzo, the countess immerses herself in blood in a desperate bid to keep him and plays directly into the hands of her enemies. Delpy told a news conference that Bathory still had a strong hold over the public's imagination - nearly 400 years after her death in 1614 in what is now Slovakia at the age of 54.

"In our folklore she's very present; like the bad queen in Snow White, and in Dracula. She's inspired many writers throughout history as the dark side of woman," she said.

The film, which includes U.S. star William Hurt and Romanian actress Anamaria Marinca, also explored feminism, said Delpy.

"To accept that women can have a dark side is in a way accepting that we are all equal," she said. "It's a question of individuals and not gender. It is feminist, but it's past the feminism of the idea that women are great and men are bad."

Delpy, who described herself as "neurotic, psychotic and hyper" when asked where she drew her energy from, said the film was not just about the longing for eternal youth.

"To me it's more about dying and decaying and rotting. And I think a fear of aging is also a fear of death," she said. "And that's something I have. It's a pretty common fear."

Source: Reuters/The New York Times

More reviews and interviews...

September 2007: More reviews and interviews about "2 Days in Paris":

The Arizona Republic

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. Delpy wrote, directed and scored this film. It's entirely her project, and it's amazing she can be quite this brutal about her own character; there is considerable insight into human behavior here and a willingness to look into the mirror pitilessly. Read the article

Times Online

Delpy's film appears to be all lightness and fun, but it's actually a serious look at relationships, and at how difficult it is to get to know someone. Marion and Jack hide behind playful, bickering banter - and never confront what is really going on between them... Read the article

The Herald

Despite the film's breezy start, she plays increasingly rough with her characters and country. Delpy the die-hard romantic, so evident in Before Sunrise and her Oscar-nominated Before Sunset, is still to be found within 2 Days in Paris, but she's grown cooler and more complex. She's marvellous, and at times spectacularly annoying, in the role of Marion. In Goldberg, she found the perfect foil for the film's farcical tendencies. He keeps the enterprise grounded, as do, in their own oddball ways, Delpy's parents... Read the article

Baltimore Sun

In its own freewheeling style, 2 Days in Paris brings back the counterculture's allure. Delpy may have intended to craft a paean to couples who commit to learning everything about each other before settling down. But at its brightest and most chipper it's about an intoxicating lightness of being... Read the article

Orlando Weekly

Adam Goldberg might be the most annoying actor on the planet, but thankfully his co-star in 2 Days in Paris is Julie Delpy, one of the smartest and loveliest actresses on the planet. Watching the two of them onscreen together is like eating fine French cuisine and gas station–purchased beef jerky at the same time. Fortunately, it's Delpy's presence that dominates. She wrote, directed, edited and even scored the film, resulting in a labor of love that feels like a 96-minute therapy session... Read the article

Washington Post

It's a gritty view of relationships. It's advanced Delpy. It's decidedly un-Hollywood, and Delpy says it parallels her view of what it means to be with another person. "There's a point in every relationship where you have to deal with everyday life," she says in an interview. "You start to live with each other, and then there are these little things about the way he folds his underwear." Love, in this world, is not about finding your soulmate but rather about making the concerted effort to stay with someone, warts and all... Read the article

New interviews and articles

August 2007: Lots of new interviews with Julie Delpy and articles about "2 Days in Paris":

Best. Movie. Of. The. Year

August 2007: From E! Online - ReelGirl: I'm not gonna say much about 2 Days in Paris, which opens Aug. 10. Julie Delpy wrote and directed it. Adam Goldberg, as her boyfriend, absolutely shines in a way he never has. Um, it's the best movie of the year. It's the most memorable. It's the truest. It's a return to real filmmaking, with elegant voice-over, photography, introspection that isn't just verbal lace. I will never forget it. More next week after I talk to Delpy and Goldberg, but omigod, Woody Allen, you now have an heiress to your throne. Read the article

2 Days in Paris - it's not what you think

July 2007: From The Hollywood Reporter: Although in these celebrity crazed days it may sound like something shocking about Paris Hilton, it's actually a delightful new romantic comedy drama set in that other Paris in France that should do wonders for Julie Delpy's filmmaking career. Delpy, who's a native of Paris, was Oscar nominated in 2005 for co-writing "Before Sunset" and has starred in such films as "Before Sunset," "But I'm a Cheerleader" and "Before Sunrise." She wrote, co-produced, directed, edited and did the music for "Paris" and, on top of that, also co-stars in it opposite Adam Goldberg. Indeed, wearing all those hats just might put Delpy in several Oscar and Golden Globes races later this year. Read the article

Finding a soulmate before sunset

July 2007: From Metro: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy and Richard Linklater's movie sequel "Before Sunset" stirs the hornet's nest and makes couples ask, "Should I ditch my partner and seek the love of my life?" Read the article

Interview with Julie Delpy

July 2007: From OutNow: "This film is close to me in a way that there are personal things I let leak in. Like I believe that there is a time in life where you have to make a decision to be with someone and be serious with someone. As we live in a society that is very much like moving on and consuming and getting to the next thing, we forget about seeing very specific things in people, unique and special things. And that's the reason why people love each other or not." Read the article

A Quick Chat with Julie Delpy

July 2007: From European-films.net: "If you are a director who is also acting in one of the main roles in the film, then you really need a crew that is well-prepared and that you can trust. It takes a bit more time to do everything and we had a very short schedule, twenty days in all, so you really have to trust the people around you. As an actor-director, though, you can often 'sense' if the take was the right one. In the end, many people have directed themselves, also on tight schedules, so it is not something I thought I could not do." Read the article

Haute Auteur

July 2007: From h Magazine: You've seen her act, paint, release a record, design clothes, and co-write an Oscar-nominated screenplay. Now, get a load of this. 2 Days In Paris is a funny, lively, smart little number with the city of Paris itself costarring alongside Julie Delpy and Adam Goldberg, who revamp Diane Keaton and Woody Allen to a T, but with a twist. We've got the lady at the helm this time, calling every possible shot. She wrote it herself, with an emerging style that's a rat-a-tat, dialogue-driven romp. After directing, editing, composing, and starring in this film you'd think she'd be dog-tired and ready for a mojito. To this she says, "Doing a film is like laying an egg. It's coming from you but it's out of you. I feel like a chicken that's ready to lay a lot of eggs." Read the article (PDF)

Actress of the Week

July 2007: From AskMen.com: Though she's occasionally flirted with mainstream entertainment, Julie Delpy has managed to stay below the radar over the course of her almost three-decade career. Julie's eclectic choices seem governed by a need to stay true to herself, and it's hard not to respect her for that. While most of her peers are doing whatever it takes to become rich and famous, Julie is content to remain on the fringes of the industry and work on films that she enjoys. Read the article

Where there's smoke

June 2007: From Guardian Unlimited:

"I hate being a male fantasy," she spits. "So many times I've been in a room pitching some movie to the financiers, and they're blatantly just staring at my legs..."
The most interesting thing about the 37-year-old Delpy in person is her unexpected hardness. I suddenly realise she's never shown it fully in any of her performances...
2 Days in Paris is a bit of a sock in the mouth for anyone who thought there was something ditsy about Delpy. Contrary to the wistful title, there is a real punch in every punchline here...
"I love acting," she says, "but I'm not a very actressy person. I don't like the vanity it encourages, the way it makes you concerned about your age or your appearance. Writing doesn't have that problem. For me, writing comes - well, I wouldn't say before love but..." She thinks for a moment, gives a little wobble of the head and changes her mind. "Yeah, I'd say it comes before." Read the interview

The Countess

May 2007: From ShockTillYouDrop: Filming is said to begin on The Countess in Hungary and Slovakia late-October. Chris Tuffin: "Julie Delpy is becoming one of the most respected young multi-hyphenate filmmakers in the world. Her intelligence, humor, passion and charm attract the best and brightest to her projects, which we're honored as producers to be a part of. Our hope is that this picture will stand out amongst next year's crop of award contenders as Julie's vision, coupled with a phenomenal ensemble cast and screenplay, has given us all a sense of excitement with respect to what may loom ahead." Read the complete article

Julie on fire

May 2007: From Best Life Magazine:

How does she deal with splitting her life between the two extremes of Paris and Los Angeles? "I adapt," she says with genuine insouciance. "I feel more French than American, well, more European. I feel at ease in Germany, London, Italy, and Spain. Americans are a little too crazy. But at the same time, I really was proud to vote in America, because it is my new country, the country I have chosen.

"In France, if you have any dream, people will say 'Ne rêve pas.' It's impossible. You're crazy. When I started off, there were not many women directors, and basically, when I said I wanted to be a director, people made fun of me here. In America, I went to study directing and no one questioned it, and half the people in the room were women. I went with my dreams, and no one crushed them right away."

Not that she's naive about Hollywood - far from it. She thinks it's "the toughest place on the planet," especially if you're a woman who wants to direct. "You know, when I was writing Before Sunset, which got me an Oscar nomination, my agent at the time told me that it won't do anything for my career. That film has done more for my career than any of the films he was putting me on would have done - bad action movies or whatever. People don't believe in you. Especially as a woman and a French actress. Now it's changing with my film. It's getting such good reviews, and serious people like Miramax are saying come and direct a movie for them. Read the complete article

"2 Days in Paris"

April 2007: More great reviews for "2 Days in Paris":

Variety

The spirit of early Woody Allen is alive and well on the streets of the French capital in "2 Days in Paris," an entertaining, deliciously played walk-and-talker by helmer-writer-star Julie Delpy and co-star Adam Goldberg. Dialogue-driven humor, which often goes way beyond satirizing just Yank-Gallic differences, has a traditional French lightness but also a fearlessness that's refreshing. Though the set-up sounds similar to the the two pics Delpy made with director Richard Linklater ("Before Sunrise," "Before Sunset"), the tone is much livelier and more offbeat. A fest crowdpleaser, this could go on to warm specialized B.O. Read more

Screen Daily

Yes, it's another film in which Julie Delpy walks around Paris with an American guy talking about relationships. But despite the surface similarities, the French actress-singer-scriptwriter's first commercial film as director (she herself has described her first feature, the no-budget Looking For Jimmy, as "more of an experiment") doesn't feel like a mere rerun of Before Sunset. The tone is more comic: Delpy and her co-star Adam Goldberg make a pitch for the talky, neurosis-ridden wit and pace of vintage Woody Allen - and most of the time they hit the spot, though the style of the film, from the dialogue to the visuals, is looser and jazzier than any of Allen's Fall Projects. Read more

European Films

As a quirky and smart multicultural arthouse comedy, the film will find niche engagements in European arthouses in big cities and a great afterlife on DVD. For 90-odd minutes of hilariously filthy, neurotic and nationalistic relationship humour, 2 Days in Paris is all you will need this season. Read more

Great reviews for "2 Days in Paris"

February 2007: Great reviews for "2 Days in Paris" after its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival on February 10th:

Hollywood Reporter

Delpy delights on both sides of camera: Julie Delpy has written, edited, directed and written the music for "2 Days in Paris," and as director she is well served by the other three, not to mention being smart enough to cast herself as Marion and the ineffably winning Adam Goldberg as Jack. The result is an utterly charming comedy of sexual manners that should do very well wherever audiences appreciate savvy dialogue and smart, observational filmmaking. Delpy writes very well, and many of the jokes and lines are extremely funny. She handles actors well, and there's an amusing cameo by Daniel Bruhl as an otherwise agreeable animal rights activist with a grudge against fast-food restaurants. Delpy has genuine comic chops, and Goldberg handles every situation with the New York equivalent of Hugh Grant's insouciance. Together they do nothing to rob Paris of its reputation for joyful romantic adventures. Read more

Cinematical

If you took Annie Hall and Meet the Parents, threw both films - as well as a Paris backdrop - into a blender, out would pop 2 Days in Paris (or Deux jours à Paris) - a charming, hysterical and sometimes gut-wrenching new film from writer-director-actress Julie Delpy. Pic, which is celebrating its World Premiere here in the Berlin fest's Panorama section, follows one couple's desperate attempt to remain calm and committed to one another while enjoying a two-day holiday in Paris, France.

The film's stuck-in-the-moment quirkiness is not all that unfamiliar to Delpy, as images of her co-starring role opposite Ethan Hawke in Before Sunrise and Before Sunset certainly dance in our minds throughout. But, instead of Hawke's dry, boring "someone slap some energy into this guy" persona, we get Adam Goldberg in all his neurotic glory. To say the film will simply put a smile on your face is a huge understatement - if you're not wiping off tears of laughter and heartache by the time the end credits roll, well, then you're simply not human.

With 2 Days in Paris, Delpy attempts to uncover all the different ways in which we communicate with one another, and how, if not careful, communication (or the lack thereof) can ruin a perfectly good romance. What Marion and Jack fail to realize is that they're not on the verge of breaking up, they're on the verge of breaking in - knocking down those final few emotional barriers so that construction can begin on the rest of their life together. Delpy, who also wears writing and directing hats on the film, never tries to get too fancy with style. With the exception of a few maniacal montage sequences and brief snippets of animation, Delpy comfortably places the camera in front of herself and Goldberg, then just lets things roll. Heck, with dialogue and chemistry this sharp, there's never a need for unnecessary window dressing - not when your two lead actors make looking good, well, look that easy. Read more

indieWIRE

Julie Delpy's "2 Days in Paris" is one of the hot films so far, particularly among U.S. execs who have been buzzing about the movie since its world premiere on Saturday. A sort of "Meet The Parents" set in Paris, Delpy's sharp, entertaining low-budget movie offers both hilarious and poignant elements after lead character Marion (played by Delpy) brings her liberal yet neurotic New Yorker boyfriend Jack (Adam Goldberg) to visit her loud, sometimes brash family in Paris (played by Delpy's own parents) at the end of a vacation in Venice. Cut to their two-day stay in Paris, the couple experience the good and bad of modern French life, and along the way run into a several of her ex-boyfriends and a noteworthy "fairy" terrorist, played by Daniel Bruhl.

"Every time I went back to France, after spending a lot of time in Los Angeles, I was so amused by Parisians and how rude they were," smiled Delpy during a Berlinale press conference over the weekend, noting that people back home are, "very rustic and tough and rude and disrespectful. And I kind of like that in people."

As noted, for some Delpy's new film evokes her recent "Before Sunset," which also depicts a couple's relationship at a crossroads in Europe. "It could be like 'Before Sunset'," Delpy agreed, cautioning, "But it is not at all. This one is not really a romantic comedy - people are rude and people (are) tough... 'Before Sunset' expressed a romantic side. With this one I wanted to express something else." Concluding the thought, she added, "It's a comedy, it's a funny film, but underneath there is something serious about it. In typical Amer-indie style, Delpy not only wrote, directed and stars in the film, but she also wrote music for the movie and also edited the picture. The film was shot in HD in just 20 days. Read more

Press release

Marion and Jack live in New York. Marion is French and Jack American. They have just spent the "holiday of their dreams" in Venice - a trip that turned out to be full of misunderstandings and differences of opinion. On their way back to the USA, they stop off in Paris for two days, primarily in order to collect the cat that Marion had left in her parents' care. The couple move into Marion's tiny old apartment at her parents' house. This is the first time that Jack has met Marion's parents. These two onetime "revolutionary" leftwingers don't set much store by convention. If they have a quarrel to slug out, they have no qualms about doing it right then and there, no matter who is present. This is something of a culture shock for Jack. He senses that Marion's parents are prejudiced against Americans, but is nevertheless promptly accepted as a new family member without much ado. Jack doesn't speak a word of French. When Marion meets her old friends he is startled to discover customs that for him seem strange and tortuous. These endless discussions about sex! And these odd practices when it comes to food! And the drunken taxi drivers! What's more, Jack becomes convinced that Marion is keeping quite a lot from him. Why is it that she seems to run into one of her ex-lovers on every street corner? And what about those little white lies she tells to try to appease his jealousy? All of this makes Jack so furious that, in the end, they decide to part. While Marion tries to slake her need for revenge with one of her ex-lovers, Jack cowers in a fast food restaurant in a vain attempt to find a piece of home. But does the love these two intellectuals bear for each other really have to end so miserably in this way?