Before Sunset

She is “neurotic” as Jesse said. Crazy and unstable, Céline has a problem of keeping a meaningful relationship.

She had a lot of exes. The men were nice to her. They liked wine and cooked well. And she was never screwed over by any of them. But what did Céline want to do to them? She wished they would have proposed to her so that she could reject them. Why was she so cruel to break their hearts? “The French men aren’t as...what's the word...hmm...horny”, she managed to murmur. In a worldwide survey done in 2004 when the movie was released, the French were the most sexual active (137 times per year), compared to an average American (111). Well, don’t believe the stats, mais est ce vraiment difficile de trouver un Parisien sexuellement actif ? Notice the calculated pause before “horny”. If it were the real reason, Céline would have used it so many times and might have written a guitar song about it. So clearly it was a lie.

She longed to love and be loved but when love came, she felt “suffocated”. For her, it was never true love or the right person. The solution was to have a patronizing and meaningless liaison with a kitty and marry a photo journalist who always travels abroad. Did she ever have true love and the right person? Céline thought it was the night with Jesse.

Was it?

Jesse is less psychoneurotic, but his weakness is not being able to hold on to his idealistic beliefs and caving to pragmatism. He married the school teacher because she was pregnant, and stayed with her because of their son. If he were an idealist he thought he was, he should have gone to Paris after the ill-fated rendezvous in Vietnam. He would have spent all his life searching for her, if he believed she was his true love. No, he didn’t do so. He settled. He knew it was a wrong thing to do, as he was thinking of Céline even on his wedding day, but he settled. He was the reason for his own agony.

So was it true love between Jesse and Céline on that fateful encounter on the train nach Wien?

No.

What Céline was looking for was curiosity. She loved the US. She left New York because she couldn’t renew her visa. She took on projects in India and Mexico. She wanted to learn Chinese. Only exotic things intrigued her. And a handsome American on a train from Budapest to Vienna intrigued her. She fell madly for him, hormonally. He felt for her because she was French. However, they knew themselves well enough not to exchange any contact information. They foresaw that if they had stayed in contact, their affection would have vanished quickly. The rendezvous in Vietnam was designed to be a staged second “magical encounter” so they could relive the moment again. They couldn’t handle the “everyday love”. In that sense, they were chasing fantasy or a fairytale that ultimately eluded reality. That’s why Céline couldn’t keep any meaningful relationship, and Jesse could only fantasize it in his book.

There is a little detail earlier in the movie: when Jesse told her he spent a couple of days in Vietnam in her absence, she asked, “Did you meet any new girl there?” He joked, “of course, there was this girl Gretchen…”. Gretchen is a common German girl’s name. So it shows that she could easily fall for another exotic person in Vietnam in just two days, and he could easily fall for another European girl in an equally short time.

At the end, Jesse will miss his flight, and Céline will fall in love again with Jesse because the Paris meet was unplanned and presumably destined, which translated to “magical”. However, it won’t take long for Céline to get tired of the American stud. She is destined to be depressed and alone.

Looking at the title, any photographer knows that the light at sunrise and sunset is magical. Screenwriters call it “magic hours”. It’s ephemeral. That’s how long Jesse and Céline’s passion towards each other will last.

After sunset, there is just darkness.