Before Sunrise?

Hello Moviewatchers,
This bloggie will be about a film I saw recently, called Before Sunrise, click here for a link http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112471/, the sequel called Before Sunset was recently released in movie theaters. I had always meant to see the original film and now with the advent of the sequel my recalcatrance has been removed.

To summarize the film is about two people ; an american named Jessie played by Ethan Hawke, and a french grad student named Celine played by Julie Delpy. They meet on a train traveling to Vienna. Jessie convinces Celine to prolong her trip back to grad school at the Sorbonne by 8 hours and spend his last night in Europe with him before he travels home by plane to the U.S in the morning. So, they spend a night outdoors in Vienna talking, walking, and generally begining a relationship which can go nowhere and therefore goes everywhere conversationwise.

I must tell you to start that I had very high expectations for the film. My law school neighbor loves the film so much she watches it over and over and over....and lucky me-because I got to borrow it from her for free. And THEY DID MAKE A SEQUEL to it-now almost 9 years later-which picks up where the last movie left off 9 years later. (And the sequel link http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381681/) The film did reasonably well, Richard Linklater directed again and wrote much of the script with Kim Krizan just like the first. But, I digress.......
This film for me was wholly unrealistic and pretentious-but it was gripping-unlike most films where people are just talking the whole time-this film held my interest- in the same way that a play can hold your interest through long winding conversations.

Realistically, the story just seems implausible-the poet in the street asking for words to create beautiful poetry, the enchanting and exotic fortune teller(who is not stinky or rude-this was my experience in Europe), the bar owner who 'loans' them a bottle of wine-to the fact that you are expected to believe that Jessie really wants company and not a quick roll in the hay with a beautiful french girl before heading back to the U.S.

Jessie and Celine share the secrets of their relationships. Jessie has just been unceremoniously dumped after traveling to Spain to visit his Master's of Art history girlfriend.(It is so trendy for her to have been an Art History major-she could have been an accounting major for all it mattered.) Celine has just been dumped by a jerk. Just after the dumping, Celine visited a shrink to get some help for her depression-the shrink takes a story about a woman planning to kill her boyfriend as real that Celine has written-and decides she is nuts and alerts the police. (I must say I don't completely disagree with the Psychiatrist's actions.)

You believe the two could hang out because they are both broken by recent bad experiences-what they both really need is a rebound to forget their problemsif you ask me, but no one did-). There is a definite theme of loneliness and searching between them. Jesse talks about reincarnation, and how we could all just be broken pieces of other people as a way to explain the higher number of people supposedly reincarnated today than when the world began....OKAY. Celine recounts how her Grandmother was always in love with this guy she never saw again and married Celine's Grandfather. Jesse tells her that the guy wasn't so great and this is a cue to the audience that really JESSE is not one to remember or pine over in the future of Celine's life. OKAY. There are certain moments which jarr one out of the film, like these:

Jesse talks about how the fortune teller should have to tell 'true' fortunes like that to an old woman, life will be dull, boring, and meaningless until the day she dies after she leaves the fortune teller. The lines sound like a vain youthful person (and I am only 25 myself!) And btw, Jesse is a really sketchy character- I don't know if this is Ethan Hawk's inate skeeziness coming out-but he's really sketchy and looks like a child molester part of the time. This is not romantic at all! Maybe I would have liked him better in 1995 when the whole grunge look was still the rage and I could translate it to that....OR NOT.

Celine describes how much she hates the way the Media-especially American media tries to control people's minds. HEY, this was back in 1995! She describes it as a new type of Fascism-right on Celine! Except she says this is a subtle thing-and it is not-and it was not even 9 years ago.

Celine and Jesse pretend to exchange phone calls with their friends after their night in Vienna to one another-each posing as the other's friend. They use this as an excuse to tell each other how they really feel-and I am completely aware that this moment is ridiculous. It is roaringly female and cotton candy fluffed. So much so, that my male companion couldn't stop laughing during it and neither could I.
End point.

There is a theme of sexuality and gender roles. Celine and Jesse spend a good ten minutes arguing about whether men or women are worse in relationships. Celine refers to the preying mantis female insect who ripes off the head of the male to begin copulation-except she thinks it's a spider-OKAY.

Celine thinks that Feminism may have just been a plot by Men to get women to sleep with them-no strings attached, okay. And I think I might agree-as the two plod towards their inevitable make out and sex. I say inevitable because of the film type and their conversations beforehand.....it actually makes me sad that she does sleep with him. Only because she so bluntly tells the audience and Jesse that it will make her sad afterwards-and I have to agree, in real life most people would miss someone they bonded with so deeply on one night.

They confront their fears of not seeing each other again by talking about how boring long relationships are in life. How no one can stand being together very long and knowing one another truly is boring....until Celine says she would prefer to know someone really, really-boringly well. And I felt than like I had a piece of truth from the movie-because to know someone that well and like them-means you actually LOVE them. This is a deep moment in the movie-past the neurotic and shallow talk of how relationships become boring over time. They are only boring if you never really loved the person. This line of thought is conforting to people who are not in relationships, have let them fail, been failed on by another person, or fear they are missing something-and it may be true that some people get really bored in their romantic relationships and loose interest because-(gasp!) they choose to let them loose all their energy.

And Celine's omission is that she can see herself in a relationship-whereas Jesse has told us over and over-that he is somewhat broken by his recent experience in Spain. If I were there, I would tell her to stop wasting her time and get back on the train to Paris. But, if I were her-I would have stayed too-I think I did at the time. Jesse-We also know that he is not to be trusted too much-beyond the time he has with Celine. As he has told Celine and the audience over and over....he has things to do in the U.S. and a silly ex to get over in the future.

It most importantly reminded me of my own travels to Europe and that horrible feeling one gets when you meet someone you would love to date or even get to know and you have no time but the present. And so inevitably if you spend enough time hanging out-that you get to know each other in a fastforward faux intimate sort of way. The two of you exchange stories and share secrets, but it feels sick and nauseous for the reality that the two of you are parting ways inevitably....it's a common experience for Americans abroad in Europe especially to meet new people briefly-make contact and be pulled apart again by their career interests, school, or geography. And I think this is where the movie is right-it has captured an experience that many people have had who travel abroad in their early 20's. It has captured it, made it sweeter, sillier and wholly unbelievable for me. It is not the great romantic epic-my Mom's middle adged friends sighed over. It is not even overly scintilating all the time. The funny part is, I still watched the whole movie and will watch the Sequel because it was for the most part a mildly entertaining-easy to watch movie. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are good actors and they have good chemistry-this makes the movie most palatable.