Before Sunrise/Before Sunset | Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy | Before Sunrise and Before Sunset:...

Before Sunrise/Before Sunset | Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy | We'll always have Vienna!

DVDs:

Before Sunrise/Bef...

	Before Sunrise/Before Sunset Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy Warner Home Video, 2004 average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

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 Whitman's Left Bank bookstore.

An American, I spent my youth and then some in Paris. In fact, I met my wife, who is French, on a train, which is the way Hawke and Delpy meet in the first of these films. And like our two protagonists, during our ride together we wrapped each other in words and our own special dialogue, which is the right word, as we were busy creating a moment which would have no place in real life: this was, after all, only a train ride.

We knew we would never see each other again, which meant time was both our prison and our liberator, confining the duration of our experience yet setting us free within it. And, that's how things stood for four or five years, until chance (nudged along) brought us together, again.

One more thing about the 2nd film. Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke create a paean to Paris, a song of enrapture for the city that succeeds like nothing else since Hemingway and Fitzgerald lived there in the early 1920's. Unstated, it's all in the afternoon and evening light, which seems to dissolve off the screen in total realness.

The film was like an exquisite French meal of the sort you can easily find when dining out in Paris with French friends. You leave completely satiated. What has satiated you, though, beyond the food and wine which have touched your palette, is the conversation you've had with your company, built over several courses and all the pauses between. It's the conversation that you share and create together that lifts a good meal and wine to greatness. This is a relevant note as this pair of films is carried on dialogue as much as it is on beauty.

Neither film could be better; they're as good as it gets.

for more information click here

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 but she was stuck in Paris due to her grandmother's funeral. While Jesse and Celine repeat their Vienna moments in Paris, they discover all the times they missed each other over the years in New York City. Jesse is in a loveless marriage with a young son who keeps him there. Celine has her life in Paris and is still a singleton. Before Sunset makes you wish with an intensity that they met up in Vienna in 1994 and also that they don't blow this second chance.

Perfect for a lazy Saturday afternoon when you're in the mood to ponder "what might have been". Even though Julie Delphy wrote soundtrack songs for both films, one song really seems to summarize what the twin films key message seems to convey - Bad Timing, that's all by Blue Rodeo.

Bad Timing lyrics:

Hey it's me what a big surprise
Calling you up from a restaurant
Around the bend
Just got in from way up North
I'm aching tired now
And I could use a friend
Might be a fool
To think that you do
Want to see me again

I Know it's been awhile since I talked to you
Nothing wrong
Just nothing ever goes as planned
Many times I thought I'd call
Didn't have your number in my hand
I know it's true
You'd never do
The same thing to me

I never meant to make you cry
And though I know I shouldn't call
It just reminds us of the cost
Of everything we've lost
Bad timing that's all

And maybe soon there'll come a day
When no more tears will fall
We each forgive a little bit
And we both look back on it
As just bad timing that's all

Used to have so many plans
Something always seemed to turn out wrong
Never could catch up to you
Moving on and doing all you've done
I don't know why
The harder I try
The harder it comes

I never meant to make you cry
And though I know I shouldn't call
It just reminds us of the cost
Of everything we've lost
Bad timing that's all

And maybe soon there'll come a day
When no more tears will fall
We each forgive a little bit
And we both look back on it
Just bad timing that's all

We each forgive a little bit
And we both look back on it
Just bad timing that's all

for more information click here

awesome

for every true romantic, for every student whose gone abraod and met someone. sometimes it just works

products you might be interested in