As I write this, my wife is asleep on the couch across from me, and Before Sunrise is paused on our TV. And all of a sudden, it occurs to me that this movie could quite possibly be one of the reasons I'm sitting here in this room, admiring my wife so cutely conked out on the sofa.
In case you're unfamiliar with the film, Before Sunrise tells the story of a day in the life of a twentysomething American student named Jesse (played by Ethan Hawke) who's traveling around Europe. While on the train his very last day before flying home, he meets a French girl (Celine, played by Julie Delpy) about his age, and on the spur of the moment, he invites her to spend this one day with him, just experiencing the city of Vienna and each other's company. In its essence, it's the story of two people who have a chance encounter, whose lives overlap for just a short period of time, but connect for that brief moment before continuing with their lives and going their separate ways. They spend their time walking the Austrian streets, seeing the sights in a completely random fashion, letting chance dictate where they go, much as chance brought them together.
When the movie came out ten years ago, I was dating a girl by the name of Karen, and we went to see it at the theater in Harvard Square. It was March or April of 1995, and we had been dating for four or five months at the time - most of the school year. It was something of a long-distance relationship, and we really hadn't thought that far into the future about what would come of things over the summer and the next year. In one of those odd parallels, it just so happened that I would be spending the next year - my junior year - in Madrid, Jesse's character's original destination. The movie was utterly charming as Jesse and Celine basically talked their entire way through it, having conversations about topics important and not, deep and shallow, and making their way through the night just finding out details about each other almost entirely by asking each other whatever questions came to mind.
In our walk back to the T station after the movie, even though I don't think we addressed it directly, I think both Karen and I realized that although I might not be meeting a random cute French girl on the train from Budapest to Vienna, and although we'd had a very caring relationship for the past half-year, it just wasn't a strong enough one to be able to last through the coming summer, an entire year abroad, and the summer after that.
Instead, we just came to admit it to ourselves over the next few weeks. Ironically, on our last time seeing each other before I left for Spain, I introduced her to an online friend of mine. They got married three years later (almost to the day), have been married for almost seven, and have two cute kids. In the year that followed, I went to Spain, got to enjoy Europe fully without worrying about whether our relationship would be able to make it through the next fifteen months. I got to take a full year of classes which confirmed that Spanish was what I wanted to do for a living. And I managed to follow that to Maine after I graduated, where I got to meet the adorable woman snoozing across the room from me.
So Karen, thank you for going to see Before Sunrise with me and letting me go off to Europe to be myself. And Mrs. Dave, thanks for being here with me ten years later to enjoy it all over again.
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