Even though I was sure that I'd like it, I've been avoiding watching this film, because I knew that its premise - boy and girl meet, feel a connection, spend a night together talking about life and love, fall at least a little bit in love with one another, then part - was almost guaranteed to be ruinous for my state of mind, particularly in a susceptible mood. So tonight, feeling not particularly susceptible and rather in the mood to be inspired, I sat down with Before Sunrise at last, to find that it is indeed lovely, bittersweet, and, in fact, ultimately far more cheering than crushing.
So many little perfect moments - the initial awkwardness of the first conversation in the lounge car, the mutual pull and restraint in the record store listening booth, the poignant conversation in which it's decided that they'll only spend the one night together...but the magic moment for me comes when Celine is talking about how, if we're ever to find this thing that we're all looking for, it must be in the space between people, spinning my thoughts about shared imaginative spaces and understanding others in a way which I hadn't expressed before, but which made perfect sense as soon as I heard it: "if there's any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something ... I know, it's almost impossible to succeed ... but who cares, really ... the answer must be in the attempt".
It's a fantasy - an idealisation - a romanticisation - a romance - but it all rings so true... which is all the more bittersweet, of course, for while the film is utterly truthful and note-perfect in its rendition of the characters of, and interactions between, Jesse and Celine (they both seem like people whom one might meet at any time, anywhere, and the ways in which they relate to each other are equally genuine and natural-seeming, perfectly observed; the film could've gone wrong at so many points, but somehow it never does), encounters such as theirs in real life are all too rare...I guess that the only thing to do is to keep on looking.
