Two For The Road Before Sunrise, Sunset and Midnight

Two For the Road (1967) has always been one of my personal favorites because of the sentimental memories it holds for me.  I first saw it in the theater with Bijou, while we were dating.  I fancied Bijou as a sort of Audrey Hepburn type, and it was an image to which she happily acquiesced.  The setting of the film —on the road in France, and the subject— the course of a marriage from first flush of love to mid-marriage crises — were both close to our sentimental hearts.  We watched it many times over the years, and often referred to our favorite lines (written by Fredric Raphael): “What kind of people just sit there without talking to each other? ... Married people.”  “Before we were married, we agreed not to have children...  Yes, and before we were married, we didn’t.”  “Do you still want a child?...  Yes, but not that one.”  

When we drove through France, we fancied ourselves like the ‘Wallaces’ at all stages of their relationship as depicted in the film: footloose and rebellious, tired and snippy; romantic and dreamy.  Always in love and together conquering and relishing the world.

Its non-linear form — skipping back and forth through their several European vacations, discerned by the cars they are driving and Hepburn’s hair, make-up and fashions — was a charming variant of the romantic dramedy genre.   

“Before Sunrise”  (1995) Richard Linklater co-wrote and directed this movie which has Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as everyboy and everygirl twenty-somethings who meet on a train and spend a day and night in Vienna connecting their souls for life through shared experience, conversation, kisses and lovemaking, and then parting.  No trauma, no “situations,” no comedic errors, no intrusions, no violence, no accidents, just two people getting to know each other.  

This is a romantic comedy form which is as different from the popular movie genre of the same name as “Macbeth” is to horror from “Friday the 13th.”  Here the young people — and I say “people” rather than characters — meet by the magic of chance and attraction that happens in life, and continue to act in ways that humans might act.  They talk about all the things young people talk about, and avoid the things young people avoid.  They talk in games, with gentle teasing and real interest in each other.  They try out their burgeoning philosophies about life, love, parents, death, growing up.

Some of their talk is sophomoric, some is insightful; they are in that stage of life when they are almost-adults but also are still-children: their ties to family, fears of the future, desire for freedom and happiness all seem equally crucial.  It is this state of development that permits them to risk a great danger: of a brief encounter that might go nowhere; yet, the same immaturity compels them to pull back from the life altering implications of it. 

As an elderly viewer, I watched in stunned sorrow as these two lovely young people who have their whole lives ahead of them connect with each other in a way that is rare and so sadly perishable.  They love each other but in their optimistic and mystical faith in the future, they believe they have all the time in the world to decide.  First, they idealistically and romantically opt for one night together without asking for any more.  We gasp; it is almost like a horror story about to unfold.  Then they seem to get it: they clutch to each other as they confront the precipice of parting.  We ache for them to do the romantic movie ending: walk off together in the sunrise.  But no, their foolish young pride and optimism is too strong for that: they decide to part and plan to meet in six months.  

We know what lies ahead for these two because they have foreseen it amid all their conversation, though they do not fully comprehend the tragedy that awaits — they have spoken about their one night together, imagining a later day when each will be with others, thinking wanly about the one who they might have loved for all their lives.  Were they meant to be together?  Their timing is all wrong.  Is there one soul who is the right one for each of us?  If we turn our back on that soul, are we condemned to unhappiness thereafter?  These are the sophomoric questions which I ask even to this day in my foolish old age.  

There is a passage of dialogue in “Citizen Kane” that intuited this story.  Bernstein tells the reporter about a girl he glimpsed fifty years before on a ferry.  She wore a white dress and carried a parasol and he saw her for a few seconds.  But, the old man says sadly, not a month goes by that he doesn’t think about that girl.  

“Before Sunset” (2004) Nine years later, Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) meet again.  He is in Paris to hawk the novel he wrote about their night together.  He has a flight to NY in a few hours.  They will spend the time together, in conversation, picking up where they were when they parted. 

That these two can re-capture the ease of their connection after the passage of so much time is completely believable.  They “catch up,” and we are interested in how they have grown, changed, not changed, the choices they made, the choices they didn’t make.  They talk now of work, loves, the limits they have discovered, the disillusionments they feel with the way their lives are moving.  Nine years ago they were on the brink of adult life, not ready to meet a soulmate.  Now, they are at another of life’s precipices: they still have time to make choices for happiness.  

Underlying all is the incipient romance that was and might have been, and might yet still be.  They talk of memories of each other, seemingly aware now that the parting was a mistake.  There is nothing melodramatic about the playing out of these things, not a predictable or cliche moment in what is essentially a one-act two-person dialogue.  Other movies which have tried this kind of thing have been impossible to bear (e.g., “My Dinner With Andre”).  But this movie is gripping.  You find yourself so involved with the nuances of the conversation that you feel it is happening to you.  In fact it has: you have said and thought these things, talked for hours with someone with whom you felt completely at ease, someone who “got” you and who you connected with in a subtle attraction.  

In the end, there are unanswered questions.  Yes, Jesse will miss his plane.  They will have sex, and then what?  We still wonder whether they will change their directions to be with each other; it would have been so much simpler if they had done it nine years earlier.  They are so aware of all the ramifications, of the risks.  They have obligations and commitments.  Are they tempted to finally join simply because they are unhappy in the lives they chose, and see the other as an escape back to optimistic youth?  Or is there really such a deep connection between them that they will never find happiness without the other?  They seem to sense all the possibilities.  

Yet, it is the coincidental genius of this project that Linklater, Hawke and Delpy have stumbled upon a rare find: a story and means of telling it that mines the depths of human love in a way that has never been successful in movies before.  

“Before Midnight” (2013) Nine more years have passed for Celine and Jesse. As expected, he missed his plane, and they did have sex and he stayed in Paris. They had twin daughters, and he wrote a second novel, and are now on vacation in Greece, with friends. Jesse is forty-one and Celine is a working mother. Jesse drops his son (from his first marriage) off at the airport bound for high school back home in Chicago with his mother. Jesse returns to the car and talks with Celine on the way back to their friends home. They talk again with their friends at dinner, and again when alone together in a hotel room and at a table in an outdoor restaurant. 

Critics have praised the dialogue of these films for its realism. I also have made the observation that the power of the films is the recognition in these two lovers of ourselves and in their words as things we have said and or thought to say. In this it is not precisely “realistic” because no relationship could survive the intensity or clarity or cleverness or sheer entertainment values of these conversations. Ingmar Bergman’s films came closer to “reality” in that sense with their long cool silences. But the stylized reality of these “Before” films is more satisfying to me, maybe because I “know” these two better: Celine’s French feminist confrontational passion and Jesse’s often pretentious intellectualized witticisms that mask his feelings.

Celine and Jesse are still talking to each other in complete sentences, even paragraphs. They can still make each other laugh and surprise one another with their insights about life and love. But, as befitting the fact of the length of their relationship, there are sharper edges now. Whereas earlier, their conversations were teasing seductions, stances asserted to impress or find common ground for a tentative future, now their probing is often intentionally hurtful. 

Just as in the first two episodes, their lives are at a possible turning point — an existential threat to their lives together. In “Sunrise” they had unexpectedly discovered each other and decided to part ways — in their youthful and immature romantic faith in the future. In “Sunset” they re-discovered each other at another cusp of life: he unhappily married and striving to share his successful first published novel with the love of his life who inspired it; she in her thirties, unhappily unmarried, an unfulfilled but passionate activist, songwriter, singer.    

Now, Celine has a career, perhaps not fulfilling, but certainly one she is committed to: she is active in environmental projects and has been offered a job with the French government. She tells Jesse about her ambivalence, and he seizes it to test the waters about returning to the U.S. He is guilty about having “abandoned” his son, now fourteen to his bitter ex-wife. For Celine this is a non-starter, and she will force the decisive confrontation which risks their future together. 

Although the style that Linklater - Delpy - Hawke have contrived departs from the romance genre in its adult aspirations, it has always shared with that genre the battle-of-the-sexes sense of la différence between men and women. Celine here is more than willing to call Jesse for his macho posturings and assumptions. She plays a trump card: challenging the age-old issue of stereotyped parenting roles — he helps but the prime duty is hers, and she resents it. She raises dangerous questions: has he been faithful? Does he respect her? To his smart evasions, she responds with slices at his ego, questions his commitment. At a moment of anger, she goes all-in: “I don’t think I love you any more,” and storms out of the room. 

In the end, Jesse is able to reming her of his charm, at least to the point that she is willing to go on and that is how they fade out. I hope I will be around in nine years for the next episode. They will be near fifty then — and I do remember that ride very well. 

I regret that by the time they reach seventy I am likely to miss that one.