Guess who’s coming to dinner: Papa

Guess who’s coming to dinner: Papa

Julie Delpy, who usually graces very serious films plays a screwball heroine with ditzy family in “2 Days in New York,” a continuation of her successful 2007 comedy “2 Days in Paris.” She stars, directs and is the co-writer, setting the film’s goofy tone. Here’s an amazing actress who worked with Kieslowski, Jarmusch, Tavernier, Godard and Agnieszka Holland and you would think she was only influenced by Woody Allen.

To begin telling us about Marion’s background so far in an honorable manner, she introduces it to us through a puppet show being performed for her young son. And this is the child produced with Adam Goldberg character from “2 Days in Paris” and because that movie was about their relationship falling apart there isn’t any surprise he is her past. She returns to New York where she now lives with a radio talker called Mingus (Chris Rock), who has a small daughter. It is all fun until her relatives come from France to meet Mingus.

In an earlier film we met him as Marion’s father Jeannot (Albert Delpy, her real father). He’s a friendly old man full of good intentions when it comes to fish out of water acting even while he’s inside water. More annoyingly Rose (Alexia Landeau) ,jealous and snippy sister & her boyfriend Manu (Alex Nahon), both of whom spell trouble for having been Marion’s ex-boyfriend. As I recall from “2 Days in Paris”, there have been many other boyfriends; Adam Goldberg character seemed worried that she could bump into them just anytime while visiting Paris during that time.

From bitchy sniping at one family dinner itself up to walking around most times semi nude around the apartment are some of Rose’s ways of showing rivalry within them. Would this be meant to arouse Mingus’ lust, or make Manu envious or just be a horny neighbor (Dylan Baker) in the apartment? With Chris Rock playing Mingus as the most solid and levelheaded person in the group, Marion gets nowhere with him. He hides himself away from others and engages in thoughtful conversations with a life-sized cardboard cutout of Barack Obama in his man cave.

An artist I should have mentioned is Marion, and one of the reasons for their visiting her family is huge exhibit of her works. Most are tangible but the centerpiece is daringly abstract; she auctioned off her soul. One of the movie’s strangest scenes might be her discussion with Vincent Gallo as he plays buyer, portraying Mephistopheles to Delpy’s Faust. (That may never have been written before.) Gallo has clearly got a lot of presence on screen but here, Delpy didn’t know how to use it best. The exercise that I want to give when we are writing this film would be series of scenes between Gallo and several characters whose souls he bought.

Over the years, I have been particularly impressed by Julie Delpy. She has a mind full of wits and is beautiful and charming, she faced challenges from some of the leading filmmakers of her time, and she acted alongside Ethan Hawke in Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise” (1995) and “Before Sunset” (2004), besides enrolling in New York University renowned film school. She also sings songs as well. Maybe seeing Albert here explains some of that. He was an avant-garde actor on France’s French stage along with his wife Marie Pillet who directed several plays.

However, what impresses me more is her light heartedness and fearless way to play such comedies. At all times it would be difficult enough to be good but being good in comedy argues for your character.

Watch Guess who’s coming to dinner: Papa For Free On Gomovies.