Before Sunset Reflections

I suppose in retrospective that saying that Celine and Jesse would meet again but not under the promised pretenses would have been a safe bet to make in my reflection for Before Sunrise but I guess we can all be half right in our respective assumptions on whether or not we thought they would meet in the promised 6 month time span. I have to say off the cuff that I did rather enjoy the film, and while the ending was not what I would consider ideal or realistic in any stretch of the imagination we have to carefully remember that the story between the two lovers in nowhere near ideal or realistic, nor are the lovers themselves. If Jesse and Celine had to be grouped into a particular relationship archetype I would see them as the ones that almost got away, not quite the fated couple or the star crossed lovers but rather old flames that never died out fully.  While in Before Sunrise Jesse was seen as the bright eyed young adventurer and Celine the beautiful yet bored damsel in distress of her own making, the characters didn’t progress much in terms of moving beyond those roles in the sequel. Instead they are both seen as slightly older versions of themselves yet Jesse is still gallivanting across the globe, only this time as a successful writer, and Celine is still making her normal life miserable for herself despite her apparent success.  Celine is seen as having fallen into a sort of dormant romantic state, a strange mid ground between being in love and wanting to be loved; instead she wants to feel love on her end. To me Celine is facing the rare predicament of being the beloved, placed so high on the pedestal that she is isolated from experiencing the feelings that other have for her. She experiences an absence of feeling because being with Jesse for that short albeit intense 24 hour time span has effectively raised her threshold for what she sees as the ultimate high of love to the point where no one else can stimulate her feelings. However can the feelings that exist between the two really be referred to as love, perhaps it drifts dangerously close to the desire side of the boarder. In the café scene of the film where the two discuss desire I found it oddly reminiscent of the famous telephone scene at the restaurant in the first film, Jesse openly address what it’s like to be freed from your desires but Celine steadfastly counters that desire is a necessity for life most likely due to their predicament where Jesse has spent the last 9 years trying to let this girl go and she has spent the past 9 years being resentful about letting him slip through her fingers.