If familiarity does breed contempt, then you and your significant other are likely the not-so-proud parents of a thousand tiny resentments. Yet reality always waxes as infatuation wanes, and what once seemed like an adorable quirk can turn into the vilest shortcoming ever. Most romantic comedies are too sweet on the thrill of the chase to explore the monotony of the capture, but over the course of "2 Days in Paris," fledgling filmmaker Julie Delpy crafts an honest, talky look at the inevitable insight that forces a couple to decide whether they should remain so.

Travel is a surefire way to pile stress onto a two-year relationship, and Jack (Adam Goldberg, so damn sharp in the past season of "Entourage") and Marion (writer-director-editor-producer-composer Delpy) appear to have squabbled their way around the world. A 48-hour layover in Marion's hometown gives Delpy's debut feature its name, and the passive aggression between neurotic Jack and spirited Marion is revealed through their dealings with Marion's boisterous family (both Marion and Delpy share the same folks), her fellow Parisians, and each other, their intimacy an uncomfortable power struggle both affectionate and scornful.

And then there are Marion's flirty exes, which she and Jack encounter at almost every comical turn (that's cult auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky's son Adan as Mathieu). Marion's efforts to protect the ego of her increasingly insecure boyfriend of course go madly wrong, but is Marion really shielding Jack from unnecessary anxiety or merely making things easier for herself? Love is impossible without truth, and the clear lack of trust on both sides makes Marion and Jack wonder whether it's time to move on.

"2 Days in Paris" naturally begs comparison to the nearly flawless "Before Sunset," on which Delpy also got a writing credit. The similarly organic script holds forth on topics like sex, art, jingoism, and, in one keenly observed exchange, friendship after a breakup, and it's obvious that there is much of Delpy in Marion. Her shooting style is both immediate and breezy, but her reliance on precious montages and third-act narration signal that Delpy still has much to learn. Delpy graciously hands the wittiest lines to her co-star, and while Goldberg is now all but typecast as the anxiety-ridden Jewish cliché, he's got the hairier, crabbier, tattooier Woody Allen thing down cold.

Without the burden of emotion, it's so tempting to examine another couple and pass judgment on the validity of their bond. But no one knows what goes on behind closed doors, and whether the mercurial Delpy will close with a happily-ever-after remains a mystery until the end. What causes a dissatisfied couple to stay together anyway? Passion? Obligation? Maybe fear? Certainly nothing sustains a relationship quite like the panic of having to find a new one.

Shaun's eyes plummet at the outside corners, giving the scrappy pre-teen an eternally sad gaze. He's an oft-bullied loner, but in Shane Meadows' defiant coming-of-age story "This Is England," Shaun finds a surrogate family in a clump of happy-go-lucky delinquents who cut the kid's hair, dress him in suspenders and Doc Martens, and cuff his jeans like a proper Rude Boy. Shaun's relatively innocuous thug life is upended by the arrival of Combo, a mesmerizing sociopath who sees in the fatherless boy a little version of himself but shatters the gang in two, heading up the half that violently illustrates how the term "skinhead" came to be so loaded.

Meadows sets his semi-autobiographical script in 1983 against the backdrop of Maggie Thatcher, raging unemployment, and the Falklands War, the same topics that inform the thickly accented rhetoric of Combo (you'll recognize Stephen Graham from "Snatch" and "Gangs of New York") and draw the impressionable Shaun into his orbit. As played by the astonishing Thomas Turgoose, Shaun's loss of innocence is ours as well, the initial joy of Shaun's acceptance sucker-punched by the bleak realism of disheartened youth and summed up in the sickening point-of-view shot we were dreading all along.

Calling upon the music of Toots and the Maytals, The Specials, and UK Subs to evoke the ‘80s mood of "This Is England," Meadows ("TwentyFourSeven," "A Room For Romeo Brass") has been able to mine his past for a handful of features now. He's stylish without being flashy, allows his cast the freedom to ad lib, and thanks to an oeuvre steeped thus far in that working-class sensibility native to the British, Meadows stakes a claim as his generation's Mike Leigh.

2 Days in Paris

(R) DIRECTED BY JULIE DELPY

NOW PLAYING

This Is England

(R) DIRECTED BY SHANE MEADOWS

OPENS FRIDAY AT THE LITTLE