8/11/04

Man, I thought I've had to work a lot over the past 3 weeks, but I just read Janice's page today and I guess I'll stop complaining now.

Anyway, I saw the movie "Before Sunset" on Sunday with Miriam. Slight *spoilers* in case you really want to know nothing about a movie, but there aren't too many plot details, and this isn't that type of movie anyway. So Miriam had been wanting to watch it since she heard that it was coming out, and was endlessly looking to find a copy of "Before Sunrise", which this movie is a sequel to. Anyway, it got to the point that she had to join Netflix just to get a copy of it because it had been rented out of every Blockbuster and even the public libraries.

So, just to give you a little background on the movie, "Before Sunrise" was released in 1995, and is basically about two people in their early twenties, doing the Europe "thing." They meet on a train and end up really connecting, and they hook up for one incredible day. Ethan Hawke is the American, and Julie Delpy is the French woman.

So "Before Sunset" takes place 9 years later (nice unity of real time and movie time) and they end up meeting again in Paris while Hawke is on his European book tour. This movie functions in what they said in my Shakespeare class is the "unity of time," meaning the two hours or whatever of running time is also two hours in the movie. It basically follows Hawke and Delpy through the streets of Paris as they talk and catch up. What makes it interesting is definitely the conversation. I mean, this movie has no plot. It's two hours of listening to whatever they feel like talking about and they end up covering a lot of ground. They kind of talk about everything - it's like they're in between quarter-life and mid-life crisis. I found it pretty interesting because I felt like I could relate a lot to what they were talking about, and then it got me thinking on the whole quarter-life crisis, and why people go through that now, and why they didn't before. Like thinking back to a time when you were more idealistic, and wondering and regretting why things are so different now, and how the heck you got to be so pessimistic about things. It was so odd - some of the things they would say were almost verbatim what Miriam and I have been talking about for awhile. Anyway, it was just odd.

Things I liked about the movie: Julie Delpy's song, the scene in the car, when they walk up the stairs to her apartment, relating to the conversation.

Things I didn't like: Conversation and characters a *little* over the top, the fact that they could walk so easily in Paris (it was NOT like that when I visited).

Overall, I give this movie 3 1/2 stars out of 4. I liked it, but probably liked it a little bit more because it hit close to home. Miriam really liked it also - she said that it's in the top 5 right after we saw it. I'm not sure if she would say that now, though.


*Sidenote* We saw this movie at the Aquarius in downtown Palo Alto - an indie movie theater. Anyway, the previews were great because they were all for indie films. Looking forward to watching "Garden State" with Zach Braff and Natalie Portman.