On Before Sunrise

Last night I watched Before Sunrise for the first time since I was about sixteen. When this movie came out I remember being in quite the flurry of excitement, as it was in the midst of the Reality Bites-induced 'Ethan Hawke as greasy haired anti-hero of the cynical generation' that so characterised my lank-haired youth. I was quite startled by the film, as apart from the basic premise - Ethan and Julie Delpie wander around a European city for one night, knowing they have to go their respective ways in the morning - it turns out that I remembered nothing, nothing, about this film. It never ceases to astonish me just how little information I can retain about things. It has the advantage of meaning I can read and watch things over and over again and be just as surprised by them every! single! time! but it does have slight drawbacks as far as the 'operating in reality' aspect of life.

The watching of Before Sunrise was because I went into the Land of Temptation again (JB Hi-Fi). They had a double set of the DVDs of Before Sunrise and its sequel, Before Sunset. I haven't seen Before Sunset yet, but its release, with the descriptions of its premise 'Ethan and Julie meet ten years later, this time for a day' created in me one of those 'it's been ten years!' moments. It generally got fairly bad reviews, as did I think the original film, being targeted at the late-adolescent girl who was happy to swoon at Ethan as he uttered his pseudo-profundities for an hour or so. Not a subset which is likely to create broad appeal. I suspect there may have also been a subset of late-adolescent boys who couldn't wait to get to uni and be Ethan, slack-hair and all.

When the movie started I thought they were going to leave Ethan in the rust-coloured skivvy he appears in in the first scene for the whole film. Fortunately he gets changed, into the late-nineties uniform of grey tshirt and leather jacket. Unfortunately he doesn't acquire a belt, which isn't a great look, especially on the buttless. Julie remains in the same outfit for the entire film, that particularly lacking nineties look of black dress over white tshirt look with flannel shirt over the top and bulky shoes. What were we thinking? There's also a random polka-dot skirt underneath the black dress, so she just inhabits the land of clash for the entire film. Obviously my initial reactions to film are lost in a haze of swoon, but I'm pretty sure I thought she looked excellent when I first saw her in this attire. I remember thinking during the nineties, as we all recoiled in horror at the eighties, that there would never be a time when we would feel that way about the nineties, because fashion just wasn't making those kind of mistakes.

I can certainly see why people found this film inordinately irritating, featuring as it does two people wandering around for twelve hours talking about themselves, and then ending. But I still did enjoy it, even with a little bit more of an idea that I would probably smack Ethan repeatedly these days, rather than put up with his meandering narcissism. Yes, that's right, it's perfectly polite to ask someone a deeply personal question, receive a decent answer and then come back with a thought that you had that reincarnation didn't make sense because there are so many more people these days than there used to be and so, what, were they like, fragments of souls now? No, you twit, reincarnation believes in the progression of souls through different forms, so it means that what were single-celled organisms have gradually progressed to their glorious, near-ultimate form of the human male. What really doesn't make sense is how you, oh slack-haired saggy-panted one, could be regarded as the almost-height of the reincarnatory ladder. If that's my next option, I choose labrador.

When I was sixteen I'm pretty sure I would have had more of a 'wow, that's so like, excellent - going round Europe on trains for two weeks, thinking really deep thoughts'. What's so amazing about really deep thoughts... Honey, there's a reason that girl in Madrid dumped you and sent you into that vortex of pain that sent you to the trains of Europe. He didn't seem at all interested in the breads of Europe. I'll keep you posted on my thoughts about the sequel.