When I watched the movie Sunrise a few weeks ago, I promised that Richard Linklater's unrelated Before Sunrise was on my agenda of things to finally watch. Then, last week, I was sitting down to watch it, but the DVD made the player sound like a fork in the garbage disposal, so my attempt was thwarted. Now, I have my replacement DVD from Netflix, it's in my computer, and I'm ready to enjoy. This is my sixth movie of the weekend, which was my goal so that I could catch up to the one-movie-per-day average. Huzzah! (This is also a good way to spend the interim between my last movie and a new episode of "The Amazing Race".
I've long known about this movie as having a terrific, mostly-two-person screenplay, where all the action happens in a day (think Hello, Dolly, but all the action actually feels like it could actually happen in one day), and I'm excited about finally sitting down to watch it.
I'm going to give a bit of a shout out to my friend Maya, who I met on a plane and we spent the entire two-and-a-half hour flight chatting (probably drove the people around us nuts, but ask me if I care...) and when the flight was over and we were taxiing to the terminal, we finally introduced ourselves. You know, cause what's a name when you're just having a great conversation? But in reality, it was a good thing we did at the end, because it allowed her to stalk me on Facebook and send me a friend request. And before you all go "Um, that's weird," the only reason I didn't do the same thing first is because my hotel didn't have Internet access. So there. :D
What made me think of the above is that after Jesse (Hawke) and Celine (Delpy) meet on the train, they have this big conversation in the lounge car and right after they get off the train together, they introduce themselves and I laughed a little.
This movie is definitely one of those films my mom tends to describe as "one that's just talking and talking" where not much really goes on. And okay, this would be a quasi-accurate assessment, with the exception that amidst all this conversation, things actually do happen; life happens.
In the day they spend together in Vienna, they walk around and do somewhat cool, but not too cool, things and meet some interesting characters, like a starving artist who writes poems for spare change and a palm reader who tells the main characters that they are "stardust".
I love how, despite the fact that this takes place in Vienna, it reminded me so much of the time I spent in France, especially the getting the red wine and taking it to some place (like along the Saône) and sharing it with friends and doing little else other than talking and sharing stories and having a good time.
Hawke and Delpy have great chemistry, and yes, a lot of it is aided by the wonderful screenplay and direction, but with less accomplished actors, this movie would have absolutely sucked. Both are quirky, have their own faults and positives, and they feed off of one another for 100 minutes. Time well spent, as much for them as it is for us as the viewers.
Score: 9/10
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