After re-reading my superbly well-written review of Before Midnight for the sixth time, I pondered about the last romance film that made me feel so delightfully arrogant. Coincidentally, that film was its prequel Before Sunset.
Now I’m a flawed romantic; I always have been. My obsession with love wasn’t a manly thing for a teen to admit back in the day. As an insecure 17-year-old with the face of an oil well, I had to pick and choose when to express my romantic ideals. It was a quality of mine that some had mistaken for precocious wisdom when it was really more of a cursed curiosity that bled into youthful egotism.
With an ostentatious hipster-like disdain for mainstream rom-coms and teen-aimed fluff, I used my film geek card as evidence towards my condescending belief that I was a REAL romanticist, and that I had a far better grip on what it meant to be in love than the Neanderthals around me. Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset was my license to be such a prick.
For the uninitiated, the film is a tale told in real time of a couple reacquainted nine years after sharing one night of blissful romance in Before Sunrise, a film I hadn’t seen at the time, or needed to – it was easy to understand and recognise the resulting baggage these characters held without having paid witness to the relating event. As they meander around France, the two speak about the directions their lives went while laughing off their brief affair. However, this supposed small-talk chips away at their fragile desire for each other – or to recreate that magic they remember so fondly. But that magic also had hindering consequences to the lives they had led since then. As the reality emerges in the third act, they emotionally crumble together.
I wanted to be Jesse. I wanted to experience that euphoric/hindering love. I wanted to know what it was like to be acquainted (and reacquainted) with someone you instantly clicked with. Being the obscure young lad that I was, the movie engulfed me, and I had to tell people about it – people that wouldn’t instantly respond with “what a gayyyyyyyyyyyyyy guy”.
But I was a terrible writer back in 2006 and an even terribler talker – I had no clue how to express myself or articulate films and the ways they affected me.
I wasn’t self-aware of this fact either, so whenever I’d incoherently explain Before Sunset, I’d write off their confusion as “well they just don’t get it”.
I needed to find people who had either seen the film or would be willing to borrow my DVD copy. The eager ones I knew were all girls, as you can imagine. They took more of a shine to romantic flicks, which is what made their reactions to Before Sunset all the more surprising.
I couldn’t understand it. I was preaching to the rom-com/Twilight demographic only to be rejected in a shared experience. The inability to relate to someone about a film that affected me so fondly put me in a bit of an identity crisis, one that I shrouded with the belief that I was simply ‘above’ their false romantic ideals.
While they showered in the fantasies that confetti-ed out of Stephenie Meyer’s creative rectum, I focused on the romances that were raw and real. I considered myself an outsider, one that wasn’t disillusioned by mainstream trite.
My romances were going to be real. I was going to find my Celine on that train. A chance encounter was going to be that way I met my love. I caught a lot of public transport in the years that followed, but not once did that encounter come.
That’s when I realised: Before Sunrise is my Twilight.
I wanted to be Jesse in the same way Twi-hards wanted to be Bella. While those fans were restricted from their fantasy due to the non-existence of soap operatic werewolves and vampires, my fantasy had similar limitations. What were the chances of me running into someone I gelled with immediately? Miniscule. Do possess Jesse’s charming (perhaps slightly douchie) self-confidence? Sweet Jesus, no.
That was the entire point of Before Sunset. Jesse and Celine obsessed over the fantasy night of romance they created – one that Jesse turned into a best-selling novel. I felt that by waiting around, their type of romance would come my way, not realising that I was waiting for a fantasy all this time. And my most arrogant, idiotic move was thinking I didn’t need to create it for myself.
I no longer look for my Celine on the train. In fact, I’ve stopped looking for romantic encounters in general. You can’t see something that hasn’t been created yet. So I best be more creative.
Still, I indulge in the Before Sunrise / Before Sunset fantasy every now and then. It’s easy for my mind to wander when I’m on the bus.
