The Nerve Film Lounge: Q&A: Julie Delpy


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Talking to Julie Delpy is like boxing Muhammad Ali, only less painful. In a conversational sparring match, she's clearly in her element, equal parts voluble, engaging and confrontational. Not to mention, based on the evidence in her new film 2 Days in Paris, more than a little crazy. Delpy is best-known by cinephiles and romantics the world over as Celine, the beautiful and fiercely intelligent Frenchwoman who trades jabs and kisses with Ethan Hawke in Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, but in her new film — which she wrote and directed — the actress raucously turns the Celine persona on its head.

2 Days in Paris is less an ode to her hometown than a caustic, unhinged vehicle for Delpy's radical social commentary. . . disguised, of course, as a romantic comedy. In the film, her character sadistically subjects her American boyfriend (Adam Goldberg) to a crash course in jealous paranoia, while laying waste to French and American behavioral and sexual mores. Those expecting Before Sunset 2 should adjust their headlights; 2 Days in Paris is, in the best sense of the term, a neurotic head-trip.

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As Anthony Lane accurately quipped in a New Yorker review, the film is "not a vanity project. . . [but] an insanity project." Nerve recently entered the ring — a Manhattan hotel suite — with Julie Delpy to perfect the art of dialogue. — Akiva Gottlieb

This film indulges every stereotype that Americans supposedly harbor against the French — infidelity, arrogance, xenophobia. Are you trying to tell us that these stereotypes hold true? Or is it that you've started to see your home country from a quote-unquote American perspective?
I like stereotypes. For example: French people do eat rabbit. My dad cooks rabbit all the time. Every week we have rabbit stew. It's one of my favorite things to eat. It's true that you go to a market and there's, like, little piglets hanging everywhere. It's not a fantasy. Obviously it's not true that French men only talk about sex, but, because it's a movie, I want to feed Jack's paranoia about his girlfriend being surrounded by perverts. Obviously the dad is a pervert and not every older French man is a pervert, but I thought it was funny because it feeds Jack's paranoia.

And it works wonders, because it's the first movie about Paris I've seen in a long time that actually makes me a little bit scared to go there. . . Paris on film, especially in films made by Americans, is often romanticized to a silly extent.
Paris is a tough city.

Yeah, they fight with the cab driver. Big deal, it happens to me every other day. Of course you will have a pervert follow you around on the subway, that happens to me all the time!

Adam Goldberg's character is sort of this paranoid, hypochondriac nebbish. It's almost as if you wanted to work with Woody Allen, but he's too old for the role.
Yeah, he has this kind of sad-clown quality. The more he's suffering, the funnier he looks, which is what you need for this part, really. But he takes off his t-shirt and he has muscle and he's covered in tattoos. It's like a hip version of Woody Allen. He's insecure, but he's pretending to be secure, with his looks and his muscles, tattoos, and all that, which I kind of emphasize in the film. . . That's why I kept telling him to take off his shirt, which he was very happy to do.

How did this all play in France?
It just came out, and people are loving it. Some people were offended by the racist taxi driver. One journalist I was interviewed by, I asked: "You've never taken a trip with a racist taxi driver?" and he said, "Yeah, I have many times," so I was like, "You're not happy that I'm showing it in a movie," and he said, "Yeah, it makes people feel like that's how it is everyday, when it's probably happened to you, like, twice." I was like, "No," and he's like, "Well, twenty times?" and I was like, "Yeah, so why not put in a movie then?" It's so weird. The French don't like to be criticized. They're perfect people, and they want people to know that.

Do you live in France, or America?
Half and half. I feel very linked to both cultures, so I gave both cultures a little bit of criticism. I think it's harsh sometimes, but it's not mean. I am grateful for both cultures in my life.

Your experience in relationships obviously informed this film, but also informed Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, which are two of the most perceptive films about relationships that I know of. How has your participation in these films has changed your romantic life?
Well, the first film was more personal. Ethan Hawke and I wrote most of the dialogue, though we didn't get credited, which Richard regretted very much afterwards. For the first time, I actually formulated what I felt, emotionally, in my life. It was very interesting, but at the same time, it can be painful to really understand the concept of love in a deeper way, because then it has more weight. If you have no real understanding of the concept of love, it makes love much lighter. My love life was personally very heavy for a long time. How people perceive me. . . we were always kidding on Before Sunset when we were writing it. . . I'd been single for a while, and the goal of the film was to get me laid!

Did it work?
Yes. No, I'm kidding, not just to get me laid, but the guys were always saying, "If no one falls in love with Julie after this film, what are we going to do?" I met my boyfriend who I've been with for three years now before the film came out. But it's funny. We joke a lot, Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke and I, when we work together. It doesn't seem like that on the film, because we make it romantic, but when we're working, it's a lot of dirty, politically incorrect jokes.

2 Days in Paris is more of a broad comedy, but the film ends almost just as ambiguously as Before Sunset. Is it optimistic or pessimistic about the possibility of romantic fulfillment?
I change my mind on the outcome of the relationship everyday. I don't know if it's possible to be with someone forever and be happy ever after. I'm hoping, but I'm not sure. Actually, Before Sunset is less ambiguous than this one, anyway, because it's more about the immediate situation of them staying together, or staying at least for awhile. Here, it's like, is this relationship ever going to work? Maybe they're not made for each other. Maybe it's not a question of being made for each other or not, maybe it's a question of making an effort, of making the true commitment. . . They're both avoiding intimacy. He's avoiding intimacy by not being in the moment and complaining all the time. Not the right position in bed, he wants to take photos, he has diarrhea, you know, it's always something. . . And she's afraid of commitment in another way, which is that she still keeps open other possibilities, other men. I think when you have to commit to someone truly, you have to let go of the past entirely, and you have to let go even talking to people that could be a threat to the relationship.

Unlike many American actresses, you never seem afraid of offering impassioned political commentary on the screen, even when the movies are not political. This isn't too surprising, because if we believe this movie, you seem to have been raised by anarchists. In your films, the characters are constantly weighing their petty ego concerns against larger global issues.
Yeah, I think it's important. Love problems are mundane. There's a side of me that always feels it's good for the character to have this consciousness. To me, it immediately makes the character likable. The line that defines Marion very clearly is: "I read the other day that we use four times more toilet paper than men. . . And now I think of everything we destroy." Which is such a weird way of realizing we destroy things — toilet paper! I like to remind the audience that there are other problems in the world. Sometimes I think about my little problems making my film and blah blah blah, but shit, we're all going to die. I'm not a savior of the world. I can't get involved in a cause, because I'm not famous enough and I don't have the money to give millions of dollars. If I gave thirty percent or fifty percent of my income every year, people would laugh at me, because my income last year was $8,000. So, no one would give a shit, and plus, if I gave half my income, I wouldn't be able to pay my rent. But, at least in a way, through movies, I can express something, and to me that counts as something.

You're interested in making movies with explicit political themes.
But I'm a woman, and it's easier to give money to a woman to do a romantic comedy. It doesn't scare people as much. I would love to do a movie on corruption and war, but I don't have the money! Also, for me, what's fun about putting politics into a movie is that they always tell you, the studios and stuff, they really want to avoid certain conflicts that could really take you away from a certain demographic in a country. I'm clear from the beginning that the hardcore supporters of Bush won't be huge fans of the film. You know, nothing against them, but the film is openly. . . I won't say "anarchist," because then I'll get arrested. But, you know, closer to that than even "liberal." I mean, it's liberal, but it goes even a little further than that.

In Before Sunset, your character was an environmentalist. You never see an environmentalist as a major movie character, so I said to myself, that must be part of Julie Delpy's persona. . .
Yeah, obviously I picked what Celine does in Before Sunset. That's what I think the big-studio people miss. I don't think they realize people need a little bit more. Often artists have been criticized for taking political positions. I am politically clear, but I feel it's more interesting through films. And with humor, I think it makes even more powerful.


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