BEFORE: This one's stupidly easy, both leads - Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy - carry over from "Before Sunrise". This is why I usually program in pairs, for years I've been putting two films with the same lead actor on DVDs (whenever I can) and it cuts my linking workload in half. So a three-peat helps me out even more. And I can check in with Jesse and Celine a few years down the road to see how they got back together.
The TCM line-up for tomorrow, February 4 is going to feature "School Days", plus the rap battles of "1949 Cinematography Winners: B&W vs Color" and "Olivier's Best Shakespearean Role" - duh, it's Hamlet. Here we go:
5:30 am "These Three" (1936)
7:30 am "Cheers for Miss Bishop" (1941)
9:30 am "The 400 Blows" (1959)
11:15 am "The Children's Hour" (1961)
1:15 pm "The Corn is Green" (1945)
3:15 pm "Goodbye Mr. Chips" (1969)
6:00 pm "Blackboard Jungle" (1955)
8:00 pm "Battleground" (1949)
10:15 pm "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949)
12:15 am "Hamlet" (1948)
3:00 am "Henry V" (1944)
Damn, I've only seen 3 of these - "Goodbye Mr. Chips" and the two Shakespeare adaptations. But I've got "The Children's Hour" on my list as part of an unscheduled Audrey Hepburn chain - I can't count that in good conscience. And I really should watch "The 400 Blows" at some point if I want to be taken seriously, but I just don't have the time. So another 3 out of 11 brings me up to 24 out of 45, and I'm down to 53%. I just knew my high score wasn't going to last.
THE PLOT: Nine years after Jesse and Celine first met, they encounter each other again on the French leg of Jesse's book tour.
AFTER: I watched the first two films of this "Before" trilogy back-to-back, both on Demand, on an overnight mini-marathon, but one counted as my Saturday film, the other as my Sunday film. Had to clear my schedule for Super Bowl Sunday, without any movie getting in the way of the game.
So now we know the answer to the question, "Did they ever see each other again?" Yes, but it wasn't when or how either of them expected - because that would be boring, right? When it comes to hemispheres, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, especially if they forgot to get each other's contact information. Remember, they didn't have decent cell phones in 1995, not the kind you can just bump together to put yourself in the other person's contact list, or text messages where you can easily send each other your number. Heck, those two characters didn't seem to have any cell phones at all in 1995, I think back then if you wanted your U.S. cell phone to work while you were in Europe you had to pay for the international plan, or get killed with the roaming charges. Remember those?
Anyway, Jesse's a hot upcoming author in 2004, and he's written a book about (surprise) a woman he met on the train years ago, and their one night together in Vienna. It's supposedly a work of fiction, but we the audience know better. And maybe he wrote the whole thing to get Celine's attention again, in the hopes that she might learn about the book and recognize the story, because she lived it too. And wouldn't you know it, his book-signing tour brings him to Paris, and he kind of hoped she still lived there.
People can change a lot in nine years, but these two find themselves in nearly the same situation - he's booked on a flight back to the U.S., and it leaves in just a few hours. So they've only got time for a quick stop at a cafe, and maybe a short walk along the river, before hopping a boat to get back to where his driver's going to pick him up. Can they possibly re-connect during that time and resolve any outstanding issues, maybe get back on the same page again? Well, yes and no, it's complicated, but you know what? Most things in life are complicated. Whatever happens, good and bad, this feels more real than a typical Hollywood romance, with all of it's oh-so-convenient plot devices and we all just KNOW they're going to fall for each other in the end. But you watch an indie film with a foreign feel to it, and all bets are off. "Will they or won't they?" becomes a lot more difficult to predict.
A couple of interesting things here, like the fact that their story-time together is very close to the length of the film, so the events play out in something close to real time. And though there were obvious story beats and talking points, the conversation was sort of half-improv-ed by the actors, who received screenwriting credits for their efforts. And they shot in sequence, which is very unusual for any film - so when you put this all together, it's almost like the story was seeking out its own ending as they went along. So how does it end? Well, you're not going to hear it from me - this is a rare case where being on the journey is sort of its own reward.
This chapter is almost too short, it's just an 80-minute peek into the lives of Jesse and Celine, and now I have to wait until tomorrow and another jump forward in time to find out whether these crazy kids work it all out. But it's certainly an improvement over last year's trilogy of "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby", where all three films told the SAME story, just from different POVs.
Also starring Veron Dobtcheff, Louise Lemoine Torres, Rodolphe Pauly, Mariane Plasteig, Denis Evrard, Albert Delpy, Marie Pillet.
RATING: 5 out of 10 James Joyce references
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