Welcome to Pop Culture Princess, the lantern that appears during the waning moon, when Addison tugs out a piece of her media brain lint and asks what shape you see.
This is the skin of a killer Bella… and these are the executive dysfunction habits of an unmedicated adult with too much ADHD to stick to her own made-up writing schedule. So for tonight, pretend the moon is still waning, and enjoy your week of double-dosed lanterns thanks to the ongoing Adderall shortage and my dogshit attention span! You’re sooooo welcome!!
Last week I did something gross and indulgent and satisfying and not at all new. I watched an entire trilogy of feature-length films in a 24-hour period.
This is how I finally saw “The Lord of the Rings” for the first time at 23 years of age, and it’s also how I watched all of “The Hobbit” movies, like, three weeks ago. Can absolutely recommend consuming “The Hunger Games” in this style as well. Plz don’t ask me about “Twilight” as five-film franchises are obviously wading into concerning territory, and for the love of god don’t even think about bringing up that tosser Harold Potter. British slang is incredible but man does it sound stupid adorned with American R’s.
The cinematic triad selected for this particular marathon session has been cropping up all over my algorithms lately, absolutely dripping in #aesthetic hashtags, so I prepared myself for the unregulated nostalgic agony that comes with literally any idyllic European film setting (officially known as callbeyournameitis), and settled in for an all-nighter. I can’t really remember what it was like in the Before, anymore.
That was the best segue I could think of for revealing this week’s triple-headed target, the Before trilogy; “Before Sunrise” (1995), “Before Sunset” (2004), and “Before Midnight” (2013), from Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy. Don’t worry (darling) if you haven’t seen them, as this review is more of an endorsement than thorough dissection, kept reasonably spoiler-free. And I really hope any of my former literature professors reading this gave me a little red ink check mark for not writing Segway like a true American.
The films CERTAINLY lived up to the aesthetic hype, although I didn’t get the satisfaction of crying into a fireplace with Timothée Chalamet that I was hoping for. But I did find the social-media-free, slightly foggy visual feel of the films incredibly refreshing in a cinematic landscape increasingly consumed by painfully pithy Marvel one-liners and James Cameron’s never-ending quest to piss off font fanatics everywhere.
I also saw “The Menu” recently from the comfort of my HBOMax account after stumbling through the mixed reviews splashed across my Twitter feed (RIP and suck rocks, Elon). I disappointingly did not share the glowing adoration of so many others, even as an official Noma stan account who had high, high hopes for zaddy Ralph Fiennes and his vengeful ambitions. I get what they were going for, and I’m glad they took the shot. But something about the world-building felt like all the “we are making a Movie on a Set with capital A Actors” trappings were incredibly obvious — like everything is being overtly shot on a sound stage like Joe Wright’s “Anna Karenina” now, except without any of the glorious stylization, and none of the actors or directors or producers seem to be in on the bit.
The Before films left me with a distinctly contrasting impression. The long, rolling scenes of dialogue between the only two major characters in the entire franchise felt incredibly lived in, like they were plucked from a concentrated broth of reality. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy carry all three films walking through some obscenely romantic European setting (Vienna, Paris, and Greece respectively) having long-winded conversations about life and age and gender and sex and work and love. Each film takes place within the span of a single day. A lot happens. And also, almost nothing at all. I spent most of the evening arguing with the characters in my own head about how yeah, Jesse was being kind of an asshole, and yes, Celine is definitely reacting to her own shit instead of whatever he actually said. What is the clinical diagnosis for “can’t let go of an argument even when it’s fictional and none of the parties involved can even hear me screaming”?
The three films are set and were shot 9 years apart, so while the conversational themes stay connected throughout, the passage of time and process of aging are what really hold the whole piece together. They also lather an accumulating sting over the whole journey, like a spicy chili oil that burns deeper and hotter the more of it you eat. Time heals all wounds. It also creates lasting scars.
Watching three films in a row reflecting on a single relationship strangely somehow miraculously got me thinking back on some of my own. I feel weird and nervous and icky talking about people I’ve dated IRL and online, and at the same time I find myself somewhat desperate to do so. Not because of the actual people involved or the threat of residual romantic feelings; I haven’t been in a committed relationship in several years, and that’s the way I currently really, really like it. But my friends are all getting older and more married, and the pressure of validation via romantic situation feels more pressing with each passing engagement. Maybe that’s why I still chat to my college friends about old relationships that are so long gone they feel more like they happened in a movie I watched, not a moment I lived. Maybe I feel like I need to prove that someone somewhere once thought I was worth spending time with, worth trying to love, to validate my single-ness in the here and now.
I felt deeply comforted by the smart, tenacious, and gorgeously French main character Celine and her inability to forget anyone she’d ever cared about. My own emotional paper cuts were soothed by her staunch refusal to see romantic love as the main goal of her life, while still admitting to feeling deeply wounded by the little bits of innocence and passion and faith that are chipped away with each person that decides to leave, that you aren’t worth the suffering it would cause them to stay.
(I know that the only thing more annoying than hearing about someone’s dream is hearing about a TikTok. As a bitch who is consistently guilty of both, let me beg you to consider that it’s more interesting to try to unpack what your subconscious is trying to tell you rather than just the manner in which it conveyed the information.)
After mainlining 358 minutes of lolling yet serious discussions dallying across my screens, I drifted off into a dream about boys and loves gone by, and Richard Linklater wrote the script. Or at least edited the final cut.
I dreamt about three men that I’ve loved, two as friends and one romantically, only one of which still resides in my waking life. In the dream, one of their partners showed up to hate me for being a woman that they also cared about, a familiar beat at this point, but one that still leaves bruises. Even my dream self couldn’t imagine a way out of that particular knot.
The dream continued on, dropping in faces and names that hadn’t crossed my consciousness in years; connections so far in the hazy distance now, but that were once incredibly, tangibly, and unavoidably real to me. I feel like I’m walking through a cemetery and pointing excitedly at the headstones while my current loved ones look on with a pitying smile. I brush off a grave marker covered in moss and beseech them: can’t you see how much all of this *felt*? How loud it all screamed out of my bones? If it meant that much once, doesn’t it HAVE to mean something now? As long as the people and lives that were shaped by it still roam the planet? And even long after, because time is a flat circle on a rippling pond and we are all treading water in the waves — but that means that everything that happened once is happening always, so doesn’t it HAVE TO MATTER STILL NOW TOO???
In the dream, someone asked me about one specific ex. I clarified their last name suuuuper casually (they don’t know they were one of two) and said what I usually say when the question comes up in my waking world: “You know, I don’t need to be friends with them, but I wish we were friendly. I wish we could get a drink when we happen to be in the same city and catch up and remember the light, easy parts of being around each other. I wish the end of a relationship didn’t mean erasing me from their life like I only ever existed when they were in love with me.” I wish I could catch up with them nine years later in Paris and laugh about how young and innocent and foolish we were. I wish I still believed in romantic love enough to jump off a train in Vienna with a stranger, too.
A recurring aspect of my “Ex Files” dreams are the people that I couldn’t keep, their friends and family members that I couldn’t stay in touch with because everyone who heard about that would think it was fucking weird, and I’m quite easily intimidated by the prospect of public shaming. Sometimes their families still like my Instagram stories. It feels like a small, tacit sign of approval. A little piece of proof that I existed as a whole person, not just a girlfriend. That I was there, that it mattered. That something that meant something once, once was. Word salad award, first place!!
Further along, I dreamt that I was at one ex’s family’s house, helping to plan a birthday party (idk), and I kept finding little remnants of myself all over the place. Notes with my name on it, pictures, little scraps of memories. I think I wanted to be comforted by the idea of just being remembered by someone I once loved. Or maybe by someone who once loved me. Even if the person they loved no longer exists, and neither does the version of them that I loved, either — that’s not the point. The point, I think, is that I’m a whole person, a layered and complex amalgamation of emotions and experience, and I find it absolutely agonizing to be flattened into a two-dimensional character who only exists when men decide to desire her. It feels like having my skin sanded away while my friends watch from the bleachers and wince at the gore, sad and embarrassed for me like I’m the one who has chosen to expose all my ugly innards.
In my dream, as I was sifting through little pieces of myself from many years in the past, I told my ex’s mom, “It’s so strange, you know. To feel so physically time as it’s passing.” I remember thinking that was a little obvious and I should try to be more clever about it. I don’t know that I’ve managed to.
At the end of the dream, the ex finally showed up, unaware of my presence, and burped loudly on their way in. The circle of girls party-planning burst into giggles. I was shaking with laughter, hiding my face, glad to not be the only one a little embarrassed at the situation. When they finally saw me, I felt the weight of their attention but couldn’t look at them through the nervous/relieved tears in my eyes. “Well there goes your chance at another first impression,” someone chuckled. And it all faded to black under a chorus of easy laughs.
I’ve been thinking about what the 2022 fourth “Before” film would’ve been like had it been brought into existence. Where would we meet Celine and Jesse now? I’d like to drop them into Copenhagen, or maybe the Norwegian countryside. Let them make passing remarks and witty observations on the warm Nordic summer nights and cold Nordic people. They’d have to talk about tHaT ChEeTo iN ThE whITe HouSe and how America has spiraled even further than they could’ve predicted in the hazy days of 2013. Maybe they would’ve moved to Chicago and let the final film be a painful departure from the rest of the entire project, like the last episode of “Girls” that might actually be a more annoying series finale than “Game of Thrones”. Maybe they’d call it “Before Twilight” and give Robert Pattinson the gag role he’s spent a century searching for.
I hope I get to live through enough of life to feel the scraping of time as it carves more interesting grooves into me. I’m already excited to revisit these films in nine years, wherever the hell I’ve convinced another landlord to let me sleep between flights by then, and see how my own perceptions and reactions have changed. And in the meantime, I’ll be desperately hunting down Celine’s ‘90s-ass outfit and angelic messy French girl hair from the first film. Maybe it’s time to book an unexpected meet-cute on a train to Vienna. At least the coffee’ll be worth the flight.
Phew! We made it through another “haha look how light this will be! whoa shit that got kind of serious” essay :). Send me some weird q’s for Agony Addison and keep a weather eye on the horizon. Better late than never bitches! And don’t say it isn’t so because otherwise I’ve never done a single worthwhile thing in the history of ever, and my feeble fickle heart doesn’t want to fking hear it!
xoxo,
Beforelorn and Decidedly Un-Bitter