I have finally caught up with Jesse and Celine. It's taken three films, at nine-year intervals--Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (opening May 24)--but I am no longer jealous of their romance. All three of us are now 41-year-old parents with similar fears and complaints. Their lives have become less the stuff of fantasy and more the stuff of resentments, recriminations and regrets. So, more accurately, they have caught up to me.
Though each of the Before movies is a romance set in a gorgeous European location (Vienna in Sunrise, Paris in Sunset, a Greek island in Midnight), few film series have attempted the same level of realism. Each movie was made for under $3 million--probably Iron Man 3's budget for billboards--and consists mostly of two people talking. I left a screening of Before Midnight shaken, sad, happy and not knowing whom to talk to. But the best part of my job is that I can get nearly anyone to talk to me, so I sat down with stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy and director Richard Linklater, who gang-wrote Sunset and Midnight together, to discuss the series. (More on that later.)
I wanted to talk to them about what I had just seen, because I cannot imagine feeling closer to any two characters than I do to Jesse and Celine--and I don't even know if I like them. It's hard to create characters we like; it's harder to create characters we are.
When Before Sunrise came out, I was 23, hated my fact-checking job and didn't have a girlfriend. I'd never had a one-night stand or gone overseas for a semester. In the movie, a 23-year-old Texan, Jesse (Hawke), meets a 23-year-old Parisian, Celine (Delpy), on a train and persuades her to disembark and spend a night with him in Vienna-- a night in which they have sex in a park. To me, this was outrageous fantasy. I saw these characters--specifically, Jesse--as better-looking, gutsier, cooler versions of me. Celine was the French version of every girl I crushed on: smart, makeup-resistant, a little angry, a little crazy. Jesse and Celine walk around the city, flirt-philosophizing about sex, aging and the differences between men and women. When they have to part ways, they don't risk ruining their relationship with letters and calls that diminish in number and intensity. Instead, they agree to meet at a train station in six months. Then they kiss in a way only 23-year-olds can kiss when they've stayed up all night without brushing.
Nine years later, they're reunited in Before Sunset, which was even better. Celine never showed up at the station; just before Facebook made it impossible to lose contact with anyone, they couldn't find each other. Jesse writes a best-selling novel about their night together; she goes to his reading in Paris. Jesse is married with a kid. She's got a boyfriend. For 80 minutes they just talk, yet they build more tension than an action movie.