Available at Amazon.com
Directors
Julie Delpy
Cast
Julie Delpy – Marion
Adam Goldberg – Jack
Release Date: February 5th
Running Time: 96 Minutes
Rating: R
The Movie
This movie takes place in, you guessed it, Paris, where Julie Delpy’s character Marion grew up. She has returned to Paris with her boyfriend of two years, Jack(Adam Goldberg) after the two spent two weeks in Venice. During their two day stay in Paris they stay in an apartment directly above her parents apartment. After some sight seeing around town the two begin running into Marion’s ex’s and Jack’s jealousy kicks in and lies start flying around and the sweater starts to come unraveled until you hit the stereotypical fight/break up scene. Which leads to the inevitable make up/explanation of love scene.
The movie is some what funny. Adam Goldberg has good timing and is usually good for a quick zip in each scene he’s in. Although this also plays into one of the problems I have with the movie, I just couldn’t buy Jack and Marion as a couple. Jack is a whiney cry baby throughout the movie and when he’s not complaining about some sort of physical ailment, he’s usually making fun Marion for a joke that she never seems to laugh at. They give no sign that this is a new development, so you’d think that after 2 years of him making some pretty harsh jokes at her expense she’d either be laughing at him by now or have him killed.
Then there is her family, her father is an artist who draws pictures of a sexual nature. Including one of his wife being intimate with another man. I’m not sure on that one, the dialogue is hard to pick up. Half the people in the movie speak nothing but French, but at least there you get subtitles. Almost everyone else in the movie speaks English, but with a French accent and you need subtitles to understand what they are saying. And a lot of the conversations move very fast, making it hard to keep up with what is being said, even when you can understand it.
Then there’s the mother, who used to be a hippy, and as such, has been around the block a few times. Including a foray with Jim Morrison. Yeah, that Jim Morrison.
A lot of the later part of the movie are given away pretty early on. Jack lies to a bunch of tourist in Paris to get ahead of them in a line, and they “shockingly” come back into the movie later when Jack is at his lowest. Then there’s the hints at terrorism throughout the movie and them when Jack meets one, the terrorist comes off as the nicest guy in the movie.
There are also some pretty worthless scenes in this movie. There is one scene in the subway where the couple has some guy just standing right next to them stalking them. It leads to a nice little bit of humor from Jack, but it really has no impact on the rest of the movie and could have easily been left out.
You also aren’t getting away from political messages here. It’s not really hidden, it’s right out in the open having Jack given tourist wearing Bush T-shirts directions that he knows are wrong simply because they have the Bush shirts. I’m getting to the point where I’m glad we’re finally getting a new president so that people will finally stop making fun of him. But I’m sure we’ll get right back on the new guy and make fun of him/her too.
A/V Quality
The audio quality is fine, but even when they’re speaking English, they talk fast and it’s hard to understand what’s going on.
The video is really nothing special, there’s a couple free cam shots that helped the tension of the moment that I liked, but there’s also a couple shots that look childish. Probably had to do with limited space in the small apartment.
Special Features
Interview with the Writer/Director/Actress Julie Delpy
Extended scenes – A couple worthwhile ones, mostly easily cut
Blue State Trailer
The Savages Trailer
The Inside Pulse
I didn’t not enjoy this movie. It won awards in Europe for being an awesome love story or something. But it didn’t do it for me. It seems like it’s trying to be to many things, it’s trying to be a full fledge comedy while being a full fledged love story, while a bit of each can be made into a good movie, when its fully trying to be two things, it failed to become either. Sorry Kennedy, I think I ruined my Indie Film Kid rep on this one.
