The idea of a couple of argumentative Yanks barrelling around Paris for a couple of days doesn't really sell itself as a must-see movie.

Yet Julie Delpy - along with Ethan Hawke - made the idea sing with the swooning romanticism of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise and Before Sunset.

Here she does every job bar making the tea in a similarly-styled, sophisticated talkathon with Adam Goldberg as the verbal sparring partner.

Delpy plays American photographer Marion, a Paris-born girl-about-town whose conquests years before on home soil drive a wedge between her and her neurotic boyfriend Jack.

He's an interior designer ill-equipped to deal with a world beyond Manhattan who's increasingly disturbed by Marion's seemingly endless line of discarded ex-lovers.

To further disorientate him, Marion's family - with whom they are staying during a two-day stopover - provide him with the perfect excuse for catching the next flight out.

Dad's an erotic painter who revels in keying cars that have been parked on the pavement while his wife derives much pleasure from copping an eyeful of a naked Jack in a photo rather ungallantly shown to her by her daughter.

There's a wittily acidic quality to Delpy's writing about a relationship that's clearly out of the early silly energy stage and two years down the line into bitter recrimination.

This is a rom-com with an authentically bitter aftertaste. It's also very funny.

Tim Evans