There's something about Julie Delpy wandering around Paris that immediately makes a movie-goer feel comfortable.

She and Ethan Hawke rekindled a romance in Paris in the 2004 film Before Sunset (which Delpy co-wrote), and she's back in the City of Light for 2 Days In Paris, her directorial debut.

In 2 Days In Paris, Delpy and Adam Goldberg star as an odd couple on vacation.

The film, which is like some kind of deranged version of Before Sunset, is a dark comedy about love, jealousy and culture.

Delpy plays a professional photographer named Marion and Goldberg is Jack, her designer boyfriend.

They live in the United States and are on vacation in Europe; the movie opens with a fast-forward version of their disastrous trip to Venice, and then they arrive in Paris, where Marion's family lives.

Jack's neuroses are quickly established.

He has endless health worries and phobias (mould, germs, terrorists) and a distinct mean streak -- he gives some fellow Americans tourists a bum steer when they ask directions to the Louvre.

In his endless need to photograph everything, his lack of any language other than American English and his typical complaints (French condoms are too small, for example), Jack is the ugly American writ large.

Delpy's character initially seems warmer.

As the film develops, Marion proves to be dishonest, selfish, vain, manipulative and somewhat hysterical. And smug.

It's through Marion's parents, however, (Marie Pillet and Albert Delpy, who really are her parents and who are both actors) that Delpy delivers the sharpest (and funniest) jabs to the French character.

They are rude, obsessed with food and sex, endlessly bossy and convinced of their intellectual superiority.

Nobody gets out of this movie intact.

2 Days In Paris doesn't spare the city, either. Delpy's Paris has racist cab drivers, pretentious art galleries, gross food markets -- and all played for laughs.

2 Days In Paris has an odd ending, as if Delpy weren't quite sure how to wrap up the story, but it's mostly a light and funny comedy of manners, and sexual manners at that.

The neat trick is that under the laughs are some dark little truths about men and women.

We don't know what you'd call that, but the French probably have a word for it.

(This film is not rated)
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