Julie Delpy is a busy woman. After the recent announcement that she would be filming a New York-set sequel to her directorial debut “2 Days In Paris,” comes news from Comme Au Cinema that she is also set to direct a French language comedy called “Skylab.” This will be her fourth movie as a director – her latest film, “The Countess,” with Daniel Brühl and William Hurt, is yet to come out. Filming will begin in June, for a period of seven weeks.
Skylab was a NASA space station that came crashing to earth in 1979, six years after going into orbit. Delpy’s film, touted as the chronicle of a generation, will focus on an eccentric family around the time of this event. It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows Delpy’s artistic hold on her films – she wrote, directed, produced, acted in and composed the music for “2 Days In Paris” – that she is going to act in this one, too. Among the cast are her fellow director/actress Noémie Lvovsky and Eric Elmosnino, currently hot property in France following his performance as Serge Gainsbourg in the acclaimed “Gainsbourg vie héroïque.”
It sounds promising. The most enjoyable scenes from “2 Days In Paris” were centered on the family, and Delpy showed that she’s at her best when capturing the raucous yet complicated nature of family life. She would have been a child in 1979, so we can expect her to look back on the time with some nostalgia, but this could also be quite a caustic look at that era, with Delpy doubtless using the fall of the space-craft in some cool metaphorical way.
Delpy seems to be developing a pattern of alternating hip American indies, with cool French films. This one sounds like a charmer, and its one we’re definitely looking forward to. – Caspar Salmon
