Entertainment

The french connection

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Who’s the first actor you think of if you’re looking for a straight man to play opposite at trio of French actors in a broad European farce? If you’re Julie Delpy, it’s Chris Rock, who cast him in her new film, “2 Days in New York,” screening at the Tribeca Film Festival this week before a broader opening in August.

“He’s such not an obvious choice. People get angry when you take people out of their boxes. They like to have people in specific boxes. I love to do the opposite,” Delpy says. “Even though Chris has his wild moments in the movie, I thought it was an interesting approach to making a comedy with him as less of a stand-up and more of a straight man. I wanted to turn him into an indie actor.”

For the follow-up to her 2007 indie hit “2 Days in Paris,” Delpy couldn’t turn to her co-star in that film, Adam Goldberg.

“I knew I couldn’t do a sequel with the same guy because that would be too much like ‘Before Sunset’ and ‘Before Sunrise,’ ” she says of the companion movies about a couple (Ethan Hawke plays the male half) who spend a romantic night in Europe together, then run into each other nine years later. “Out of respect for those films and for [director]

Richard [Linklater] and Ethan,

I knew I couldn’t do that.”

Rock, oddly enough, has become a huge French cinema fan. His 2007 vehicle “I Think I Love My Wife” was based on “L’Amour l’après-midi,” and in 2010, he scooped up the rights to “La première étoile,” with an eye on penning a remake.

“We come from such different worlds, but I knew that when I approached him, he wasn’t going to be, ‘What do you mean a French movie?’ ” Delpy says. “He was very excited. His agent said, ‘Write a good screenplay, and he’ll do it.’ ”

That screenplay picks up a few years after “2 Days in Paris.” French photographer Marion (Delpy) is living in New York with her new boyfriend, Mingus (Rock), a radio host and journalist, and their two children from previous relationships. On the eve of Marion’s big gallery show, her family, including her boundary-free father (Albert Delpy) and her slutty sister (Alexia Landeau), arrive from Paris and begin to drive her and Mingus crazy.

In case you missed his name in the credits, the actor who plays her father is Albert Delpy, her pere and a longtime French stage actor. At 72, he’s enjoying a new level of fame later in life thanks to his daughter. In the past few years, Julie has moved into writing and directing films, and she has used Albert in three of her projects.

“I’m more well-known in France, but my father can’t get out of the house anymore,” Delpy tells The Post. “It’s really funny for him. He never pursued fame. He’s been an actor forever, but mostly in theater.”

Whereas “2 Days in Paris” explored the discomfort an American felt in Paris with the language and cultural differences, this film flips the script and tries to wring comedy out of the French trying to get along in America. (The father early on is detained at customs for trying to smuggle in sausages and cheese hidden in his clothes.)

The movie opened in France last month, and Delpy says it’s already done so well, it’s earned back its $5 million budget. She expects the film to have a nice run in American arthouse theaters, despite its partial subtitles.

“This film has 25 percent French — mostly the sisters trading insults. The first film had 60 percent in French, and it did quite well,” she says. “Americans are more willing to read subtitles than the French, even in small towns.”

Setting the film in New York should also help domestic box-office numbers, though Delpy says it just made sense for the character, who lived in Gotham in “2 Days in Paris.” “2 Days in New York” makes use of lots of Manhattan locations, including streets and parks. Delpy also shot one sequence in which her character wanders through the Halloween parade.

“We had to do it guerrilla style, which I think was illegal, but maybe not, because no one [in the crowd] was in focus,” she says. “People were all dressed up and dancing and partying, and some people recognized me, but we shot for four hours and people weren’t always jumping on me. I’m not that famous. I’m not Brad Pitt.”

Filming in the city also marked a return of sorts for Delpy, who lived here in her younger days and went to NYU film school.

“I loved the city when I first went there in ’88. I lived in Alphabet City, and it was kind of rough, but I liked it,” she says. “It’s less rough now, especially Manhattan. I still like it, but I liked it better back then when I would feed myself on gallery openings in SoHo, and there was nothing else there. Lucky Strike was the only cafe on [Grand] Street.”

And as for those reports of Delpy retiring from acting, she says a quote was simply taken out of context. She’s not retiring, just changing her focus a bit.

“I’m not quitting, I just don’t want to spend my life running to auditions and trying to get a job,” she says. “When you’re an actress, they send you out for anything to keep you busy and so you don’t feel left out. The number of times they’ve sent me to play a sexy Latina, I can’t even tell you. The casting director would look at me, I would look at him, and it was like, ‘What am I doing here?’ He’s like, ‘I don’t know.’ ”

She spends most of her time writing now, but the acting offers continue to roll in.

“I’ve never been offered so much as an actress since I started directing,” she says. “I’m 42, and it’s pretty much over by then. I’ve had no plastic surgery, so why do they want me in a movie?”