While his character is mostly a serious one in the new film ‘2 Days in New York’, Chris Rock has plenty of opportunity to give us. . . Chris Rock. Particularly when, perplexed by any situation, his character Mingus has an informal chat with one of his heroes, President Obama (okay, one of those full-sized cardboard cutouts of President Obama you can get at any gift shop in Times Square). Everything from dealing relationships to whether it’s cool to address him as “Barack.”

As you’ll probably guess, director Julie Delpy’s comedic sense is based in her admiration of classic screwball comedies. “I love that stuff,” Delpy says. “I was brought up on all kinds of different comedies, but I love absurd comedy.”

In one hilarious sequence, for example, Mingus is trying in vain to have a reasonable conversation at the dinner table with Albert Delpy’s Jeannot, who, barely speaking any English, gets “assistance” from Manu, played by Alex Nahon – who’s not much better, mistranslating everything that comes out of Mingus’s mouth. [“Aren’t you on the radio?” “Yes, I have two shows on Public Radio and one on Sirius.” “He says he has the flu, it may be serious.”] If talking to Jeannot isn’t hard enough by itself, the two sisters are going at it over Alexia Landeau’s character Rose’s continued misdiagnosis of Marion’s son.

“I love this kind of mayhem – no one understands anything in a conversation that’s going nowhere, and the sisters are fighting over kids and autism and screwing ex-boyfriends,” Delpy says. “It’s the kind of absurd moment that just makes me laugh.”

The scene is also a perfect example of the incredible editing work of film editor Isabelle Devinck, who worked with Delpy on her last film, “Le Skylab.” While, just as with her writing, Delpy often edits her films herself, she and Devinck worked together here as a kind of a tag team for comic timing. “She’s my favorite person on the planet right now,” the director states. “We have such a wonderful time working together, because we have the same sense of humor. It’s like having two brains.”

The mistranslation sequence required special care to turn out as funny as Delpy wished. “Isabelle and I spent three weeks on that scene alone,” she explains. “It was very important for it to have that experience of back-and-forth, between them trying to have this crazy conversation and the sisters fighting in the back. Those kinds of scenes are the trickiest things to do. If you’re a few frames off, it doesn’t work. It has to be understandable, so you can get what’s going on. The comedy has to work on both sides.”

Another treat from the editing room is a wonderful series of montages, used, for example, to give us, in a fun, brief capsule, the path of Jeannot’s life, or fill us in on the visiting French’s day of sightseeing around the Big Apple. “Most of those kinds of scenes in movies show the characters with a few seconds at this famous location, a few at another. I thought it would be funny to have a montage of photos where we see every landmark in New York in 30 seconds.” The sequence is comprised of hundreds of snapshots, taken with a Canon 5D digital still camera – all looking like a tourist (from the looks of them, probably Jeannot) took them. “That was the goal.”

Image Courtesy of  2 Days in New York

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About the author

Claudia Sondergaard
Specialised in American foreign policy media discourse, I have a real passion for media and writing and feel comfortable in subjects such as human rights, politics, environment, social issues, movies, TV and books. Reporting from Denmark. Follow me @swirlgirlversus

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