Delpy film is a slog of a family saga in NYC
FILM
TWO DAYS IN NEW YORK
Cert: 15 | Zoe Strimpel
**
Two Days In New York is probably the least catchy title of all time. Marginally less catchy, even, then Two Days in Paris, the popular film of which this is the sequel. Indeed, this is as much of a depressing slog to watch as it is for the film’s characters to experience: for us, two hours of watching a dysfunctional and often frankly disgusting French family tear each other to shreds in a Manhattan apartment.
Two Days is another heaping helping of Julie Delpy, the queen of neurotic-erotic French femininity and the film’s director. She is an artist called Marion and lives with her new boyfriend Mingus, played by Chris Rock, a radio show host, and their their kids from previous relationships.
The action centres around the invasion of their flat and lives by Marion’s family, visiting from Paris to celebrate her new show, a mediocre collection of photos of her in bed with previous men. Her father is played by her real father, Albert, who is a dripping, grinning, snoring, marginally comedic parody of a sausage-smuggling French patriarch. Her sister is an insufferable nymphomaniac and the sister’s boyfriend is an offensive fool, who does drug deals in Delpy’s flat in front of the kids, and assumes Mingus loves early rap group Salt ‘n’ Pepa.
Apart from Mingus, nobody is particularly nice – probably in that intentional gross-weird-funny way. Despite the odd laugh at how horrid the French are and how mad Delpy is, this is a chore best left alone.