2 Days in New York is a 2012 romantic comedy film co-written and directed by Julie Delpy. It is a sequel to Delpy’s 2007 film 2 Days in Paris.
2 Days in New York premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2012. The film was shown April 26, 2012 at the Tribeca Film Festival and May 21, 2012 at the Seattle International Film Festival.
Hip talk-radio host and journalist Mingus (Chris Rock) and his French photographer girlfriend, Marion (Julie Delpy), live cozily in a New York apartment with their cat and two young children from previous relationships. But when Marion’s jolly father (played by Delpy’s real-life dad, Albert Delpy), her oversexed sister, and her sister’s outrageous boyfriend unceremoniously descend upon them for an overseas visit, it initiates two unforgettable days of family mayhem.
After shooting her 2009 dark thriller, The Countess, writer/director/actress Julie Delpy decided it was time for a comedy – a genre at which she had proven herself quite adept two years earlier, with 2 Days in Paris, a successful romantic comedy co-starring Adam Goldberg. “I thought, ‘Okay, why not a sequel?’” she says. “But I knew I couldn’t do a sequel with the same guy, because that would be too much like Before Sunset and Before Sunrise, two romantic gems she had starred in and co-write with Ethan Hawke, directed by Richard Linklater. Out of respect for those films, and for Richard and Ethan, I knew I couldn’t do that.”
So Delpy spent the next year or so thinking and taking notes, as she usually does, figuring out the next step in Marion’s life. “Marion seems to go from relationship to relationship. She’s not after getting the ring and getting married – her issue is commitment, chemistry and figuring out her life,” she says. “That’s the serious part.”
All good comedies, the director notes, have, at their core, a true reality. “I like to build on real ground – not necessarily drama, but on a reality. I’ll pick a subject matter that could be a drama. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a funny story. But then I turn it around with crazy situations and characters – that’s what makes it funny.”
