How Linklater Lied to You

I, like many a college student, was enamored by the Before trilogy during my freshman year. Directed by Richard Linklater, these films tell the story of a young Ethan Hawke falling in love with Parisian Julie Delpy after seeing her on a train. In the trilogy’s first film, the two spend one magical day together and then part ways unceremoniously, likely to never see each other again.

You can see why this story would catch the attention of a lonely, sensitive, intellectual male. Ethan Hawke is our paragon. Handsome without being beefy, smart and just the right amount of pretentious. Sensitive while still maintaining his masculinity. And Delpy is the perfect muse. Beautiful, but personable, aloof, but pleasant. I would have fallen in love with her on that train, too.

In junior year, I experienced something very close to the events of Before Sunrise. Instead of a commuter train in Paris, it was my college dining hall. Instead of a copy Bataille’s Story of the Eye, she had a bag that said “I Would Prefer Not To”. I complimented her on it. We got to talking and hit it off. She was not a student at my college, but rather an alumna visiting some friends and teaching a ballroom dance class that evening. I asked to attend said class and we went to the dance studio after our meal so she could teach me some steps.

We danced for about an hour, bodies close, my hand on her waist, mouths venturing ever closer together, before the rest of the class showed up. After the class, I lingered behind. We exited together and began at 2 hour trek around campus that led us back to my dorm. I invited her in. She said no, but wanted to continue walking. It was nearing midnight. We made another lap and I asked her into my dorm again. This time, she accepted.

Mouths touched, clothes were removed, but no coupling actually occurred. She needed to leave in the early morning to return to Austin, where she lived. We lay in my bed for a while before she put on her clothes and left. I checked my phone. It was about 3 am and I had a 9 am class. I never got her number.

Before Sunset sees Hawke and Delpy reuniting many years after the events of Before Sunrise. They spend another magical day together and, this time, Hawke declines his flight home and we can guess what happens next. The catch: Before Sunrise is based on a real day in Richard Linklater’s life. He, like Delpy in Before Sunset, attempted to reunite with his flame later. To his dismay, he discovered she had died in a car accident a few years earlier. Before Sunset has no basis. It is pure fiction.

Recently, I visited Austin for a conference. I made an attempt to track down the girl I had spent that magical night with. I came very close, getting in contact with her sister and sending a message along. There was no response. The reality is that the wish fulfillment of Before Sunset is just that: a wish.

On the other hand, Before Midnight, the final chapter in the trilogy (a fourth was discussed, but Delpy was unable to commit) is largely based on Hawke’s very real marriage (and eventually divorce) woes. This film finds Delpy and Hawke as a middle-aged couple with twins attempting to navigate the banal struggles of married life. It is a return to the promise of Before Sunrise: the kind of attraction found in such a film is fleeting. Even if you eventually find each other, the initial feeling fades and you find yourself past the honeymoon stage. But Before Midnight does not happen without Before Sunset.

There’s another director whose films very much resemble those of Linklater. His name is Cooper Raiff (and if you have any connections, I would be putting some stock in that name; I see Oscars in the future) and he has two movies to it. They are Shithouse and Cha Cha Real Smooth, post-mumblecore masterpieces exploring modern masculinity and relationships.

Like Hawke, the protagonists of these two movies, both portrayed by Raiff himself, is a “sensitive young man” in search of connection. In Shithouse, he has a magical night with a girl (played by Dylan Gelula) during his first week of college. The next day, she wants nothing to do with him. To her, it seems to have meant nothing. He is discardable. To him, the night was life-changing.

I don’t think this is precisely what happened to me. I was not discarded or rejected, rather just passed along in a strange happenstance. There is no animosity, in fact, there is nothing at all between us. We literally have not spoken since that evening in frigid February.

Cha Cha Real Smooth finds a similar character, again portrayed by Raiff, floundering post-graduation. His college girlfriend breaks up with him to go to Europe on a Fulbright (and who can really blame her) and he is left living at home and busing his younger brother to and from Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. He meets an older woman at one of these parties (the Bartleby girl was 2 or 3 years older than me), the two hit it off, and, again Raiff is left spurned.

But Raiff has the decency to not lie. In Shithouse, we get the good ending. Both characters mature over the course of the year and by the end of college, they’re together. In Cha Cha Real Smooth, we get the bad ending. Raiff is left holding the pieces of something he hoped for not because there is anything wrong with him, but because the situation does not allow for something to happened between him and the girl he seeks. In this way, Cha Cha Real Smooth is far more about life than Shithouse. Life is a series of missed chances that are the fault of no one but life itself.

I never saw the Bartleby girl again. She has no social media. Sometimes I think about dancing with her.