Before Sunset and Midnight in Paris

Before Sunset and Midnight in Paris are two wandering-around-Paris movies.

Before Sunset is the sequel to Before Sunrise. In the first film, Jesse and Celine meet on a train in Europe, and spend an evening together. They part with plans to meet up after 6 months without exchanging contact information.

In the sequel, we find out that Jesse, who, incidentally still has the goatee, showed up at the planned meeting, but Celine couldn't make it because her grandmother died. They meet up in France when Jesse tours Europe promoting a book he wrote about the night. It's interesting that in this film, the twist is at the beginning; the ending is simply purposefully ambiguous.

They have an immediate connection once again, and discuss their sexual escapades and life changes from the intervening years. The movie is in real time, a conversation between two people (this is an improvement, I think, over the last film). The end is, once again, uber-ambiguous: it is unclear whether or not Jesse will make his flight home or stay with Celine.

I think Celine is great--she's witty and snarky and opinionated. Jesse gets on my nerves--he just agrees with everything she says. He doesn't have much strength nor opinions, other than the fact that he's bowled over by her.

Midnight in Paris, the newest Woody Allen movie, is a similar wandering-around-Paris-while-continuously-chatting film. It is really surprising in its ability to make you believe that the Owen Wilson character actually time travels to the 30s (you of course don't want to doubt him like his unimaginative, cheating fiance). At times, I think Midnight in Paris devolves into a name-dropping fest, but the point--that nostalgia can go on forever, like two mirrors reflecting each other--is a good one. At one point, I was convinced that Owen Wilson was Woody Allen--he looked exactly like Woody Allen when Woody Allen's hair was not white. The character that I liked the least was Owen Wilson's fiance, Rachel McAdams. I thought she was terribly unconvincing. But I suppose it's hard to play a spoiled, shallow woman convincingly and nuanced-ly and complex-ly.

The most adorable moment of the film was when my mother exclaimed surprisedly upon seeing a shot of Shakespeare and Company: "I went there! Stearns bought a book!"


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