Film Snob : Before Trilogy
“If there’s any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something.”
“I guess when you’re young, you just believe there’ll be many people with whom you’ll connect with. And later in life, you realize it only happens a few times. ”
This series did a hell of a job romanticizing the Eurorail summer—the liminal space between youth and everything that comes after. It’s been top of mind since seeing a TikTok last week of three euro-trash girlies making what they charmingly called floor salad: shredded iceberg, mayonnaise, and plastic sporks, with nothing separating them from the hostel carpet but a trash bag cut to size.
We don’t talk enough about how Céline is the original Brandy Melville girl, and Jesse is the boy I hoped to meet downtown Denver in an all night diner after a poetry reading at Mutiny Information Café. Instead, I found the real-life version at the top of a ski resort, leaving money on the table I’d scrub down during a lunch rush. For that Ethan, thank you—for contributing to the cause.
Me: stoned to the bone, shoulder-tapping billionaires for Marlboros on Mondays, because my high school thought it was wise idea to give us a four-day work week. I had a lot of time to kill.
I’d also like to thank this series for being a visual cue on the top deck of a big bus tour in Paris leading me to Shakespeare & Company, my first trip to Paris wouldn’t have been the same without. Finding Anais Nïn was a treat considering sourcing physical copies of erotic smut is virtually impossible anywhere else.
The first time I saw Before Midnight, I was disappointed. Not because it wasn’t good—but because it felt very American. American with modern Hollywood commercialism stripped away—emotionally tidy. Closure where I wanted cliffhangers. Like a fairytale happy ending without the alimony. Still, I admire the trilogy’s insistence on honesty. These two find each other, lose each other, fuck each other through every justified hang-up, and decide to do it all again the next day. I want to believe that these types of endings work both in life and on film. Receiving closure wasn’t the ending I was expecting after watching tense arguments through locked doors. If that’s middle age, sign me up.
A Missed Connection:
When I was 21, on an Amtrak train from San Francisco to Hanford, a man brave enough to wake me up to hand me snacks from the dining car. He told me to let him know if I wanted anything else. Don’t let my scorned state and missed connection color your viewing experience—but sometimes I think about what could have happened if I’d stayed awake.
Maybe I’d be summering in Mykonos with the love of my life, the one I met on a train in my twenties, on the way to my grandmother’s house. Instead, I ate the best snack of my life, fell back asleep, and never saw him again.
I hope he’s doing well. Still sexy. Still generous to the needy. He probably has a wife. I often imagine them in a beautiful house in Southern California with a two-car garage, a movie room, and a saltwater pool.
And honestly—bless her heart.