Before Sunrise / Before Sunset

Before Sunrise and Before Sunset: Turning A Diamond in the Light
It surprised me to read somewhere that Richard Linklater, who directed both films, did not actually have the experience of falling in love with a French woman on a train in Europe. Both "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset" benefit from a feeling of complete authenticity, as if the people responsible for delivering and interpreting the storyline must've "been there, done that..."

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy inhabit their roles to a point of perfection. Delpy creates such an indelible image of a young Parisian woman (with Left Bank leanings) that she could not be anything but. And Hawke incarnates perfectly the type of inquisitive, literary, and (romantically) intense young American male who stands a chance with a woman such as we find in Delpy. The 2nd film opens with Hawke doing a reading from his own novel on the second floor of Shakespeare & Co., wedding beautifully character and setting, as Hawke is exactly the type of young American who would be at home in George...

Love Linklater style.
So I've been on a pretty big Richard Linklater kick here lately. His profoundly minimalist and surreally thought-provoking films never fail to intrigue and perplex me. "Before Sunrise" and its companion "Before Sunset" are thus far among his most charming and engaging works. I must say though, after experiencing the absolutely mind-bending journey that is "Waking Life" (which I can only describe as a mad cross between "Slacker" and "The Wall"), something like this, while still pretty far from mainstream, seemed pretty pleasant and benign by comparison.

However, that's a relative measure, as this is not your average love story. It begins with "Before Sunrise", in which we see a young man named Jessie (Ethan Hawke), a tourist from America traveling across Europe. While on a train to Vienna, he meets a lovely French girl named Celine (Julie Delpy), and the two immediately hit it off. They end up spending the day together in Vienna, but both know that soon they must go...

We'll always have Vienna!
Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are atypical twists on the theme of "The one that got away". In the summer of 1994, Texas native Jesse meets a young Frenchwoman Celine on a train bound for Paris and both on impulse spend 14 hours in Vienna talking through the night like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone De Beavoir (except they actually LIKE each other). It's an intellectual match and a chemical attraction between two early 20-something adults who still have the idealism of the moment that youth is known for. At the end of their long night of goodbye Jesse and Celine depart at the train station and promise to meet up in six months time for Christmas. Before Sunrise ends with a the question of whether they did in fact, reunite in Europe.

In 2004 we get the answer. Missed connection. Bad timing and the reunion in Paris a decade later. Older, into their 30's, and significant life events behind them, Jesse and Celine pick up where they left off. Jesse went to meet Celine in Vienna...

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