It’s good to be pretentious!

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, for the first time in many years, I watched Richard Linklater’s 1994 film "Before Sunrise." I remembered it well, down to particular lines of dialogue and the movements of background players that might go unnoticed by a viewer less obsessive than myself. Back in the late '90s, the tape of my VHS copy of the movie stretched and strained between the heads of the VCR, weakening after so many rewinds and repeated viewings. The story of the film is simple enough: Girl and boy, Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke), meet on a train in Europe. She is going home to Paris; he is stopping in Vienna and catching a plane back to the States in the morning. They talk. They connect. Before they’ve even exchanged names he convinces her to hang out with him for the night. She agrees and they do just that: hang out. Like Linklater’s first two films ("Slacker" and "Dazed and Confused"), "Before Sunrise" is charmingly plotless, following the two characters as they walk and talk through the evening and night, falling in love.

Salon.com > Ian Stansel

It’s good to be pretentious!