twenty-something

Yesterday, when I got home from work, I was gripped with the sudden and immediate desire to finally watch Before Sunset, which I picked up on DVD used a month or two ago at Blockbuster. So I did. Now I'm not a big Ethan Hawke fan, but 1995's Before Sunrise -- which spawned this 2004 sequel -- is one of my favorite films. Top Five, perhaps. A few years back, I was excited to hear that auteur Richard Linklater was making a follow-up to such a great flick, but for some reason I avoided it when it was in theaters. I avoided it when it came out on DVD, too. I avoided it even after owning the damn thing for over a month. Despite hearing overwhelmingly good buzz about Sunset, I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I was afraid that revisiting the whole affair might just ruin it.

Was I right? Fifteen or so hours after the end credits began to roll, I'm still haunted by the film. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Overall, it affected me, perhaps more than the first one. I found myself both enthralled and disgusted, pleased and disappointed, by the whole thing, and afterwards, I spiralled into a small sort of funk that I now teeter back on the edge of, even as I type. I loved this film. I hated this film. I was shaken by this film.

I am a romantic. Try as I might not to be, I am. That's why the original is one of my favorite films. I am one of those melodramatic fools, neurotic to the bone, no doubt about it... And the follow-up was just as sweet and passionate as the first. Seeing Before Sunrise in high school, back in 1996, was important. It was one of those rare formative films, one that actually, truly shaped the kind of lover I would become, the kind of love I longed for. So much so that everytime I am on a bus or train, I fantasize about what might be. Every single time.

There are moments I love, and there are moments when I love the whole damn movie. The chemistry between Hawke (Jesse) and Julie Delpy (Celine) is still there. It's palpaple. When they are sitting on the bench at the film's midpoint, gazing at each other, my heart ached for them to touch, to kiss, to be together. In the car, as Celine reaches out to Jesse, and they almost connect... it's electric. It's maddening. When Delpy dances at the end, I want so badly to be heterosexual, to be Jesse, to have her. But, ultimately, watching two thirty-somethings carry on this way, after nine years apart, fills me with a great sadness. Why, when the film ends on such an ambigious, but hopeful, note? Because I don't want that to be my sad, silly, romantic future. Will I, in my thirties, still be chasing the same romantic ideals as I do now? Will I be past all the dramatics yet, happy, settled, in love? Or will I be unfullfilled, chasing after one foolish notion or another? There lies the film's flaw -- nine years later, I don't want to relate to these two. And yet I still did. This, ultimately, is why Before Sunset shook me.