There are many things to be said about the Before trilogy, among them the impressive range of its defining qualities: the long tracking shots of extended dialogue in which both Jesse and Céline, played with natural charisma and chemistry by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, take up the threads of a floating and often capricious conversation and weave something that can be magical; the laid-back boldness of its director, Richard Linklater, who’s afraid neither of the intelligent probing of its dialogue nor of the trilogy’s patient playing with its notions of cinematic time; the reliable nine-year gaps between each of the installments, making the series as much for the audience…
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The image of a charming twosome, slack and romantically engaged, each leaning toward the other in one of those countless Parisian cafés to whose notability the cinema has made a profound and immemorial contribution: it is Frédéric with his potential lover Chloé, a holdover from his youth having returned to say hello, to reminisce, and maybe to get something out of this long-forgotten friendship with a wealthy and successful attorney. And so it is—they are man and woman. He is there to enjoy the tantalizing benefits of a mistress without the guilt of infidelity, and she to bask in his gentlemanly largesse without the burden of a sexual relationship. This…
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What could be more egocentric than wanting from the sensation of another person the full throttle of desire, passion, and every shade of transcendent experience? And what could be more ridiculous, more naïve, more dreamy-eyed, and more shamelessly hopeful? And what more human? Around this and its associated myths Pauline at the Beach revolves like a frozen planet, setting its face to this and that side of the question without becoming too committed to any one point. The steely core of this human madness of a planet is the titular character, Pauline, who takes part in the fateful—and fatal—adult game of love as an initiate of this dangerous word and…
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As the congregants of a wedding walk to the riverside, accompanying newlyweds leaving by barge, a woman exclaims, “couldn’t she marry a local boy?” to which another quickly responds that “she always has to be different.” But the poignant difference is to be one of love. The marriage of Jean to Juliette, irrelevant to the world at large, is an event of gravity and import indicating not only the upset of the village, but the headlong passions of a couple overturning their lives to accommodate them. Walking solemnly from a church resounding with the peals of matrimonial grace, the couple moves through the byways of a small, riverside village in…
