Lord Peter Wimsey: Someone Who Loves My Sneezes More Than Anyone Else's Kisses

Whenever I board the train to and from Malaysia, I would have this thrill of anticipation- maybe this time it would happen. I would find my seat by the window (always a window seat) and wait for my seat-mate.

You see I had this secret fantasy that I would meet the love of my life on the train and we connect and engage in witty banter (albeit with the trademark twinge of sarcasm on my part) all the way to our respective stations, where we would part in an understated (yet dramatic in what followed) fashion and meet once more after a series of serendipitious events. Occasionally, my fantasies would involve getting left behind at some unearthly hour in some obscure station (Kulai perhaps) and having a string of adventures where we encounter Malaysian culture, society and kindness close-up and discover we were soul-mates in the process.

After 13 years of travelling up and down in the same 7-8 hour train journey, I have sat next to old guys, wailing kids, elderly aunties, idiotic chappies and all other manners of specie but I am still yet to have My Great Train Adventure [though in the interest of full disclosure, I did meet this Nigerian chap, but thankfully Renu made short shrift of him].

So when I first saw Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, I was furious at myself - here was my story transplanted to Vienna! Why hadn't I written it first?! It had all the elements of my fantasy -the chance meeting on the train, roaming a strange city, meeting strange local characters (I loved the fortune-teller!), the witty banter, the forming of connections, even the need to leave their tale to serendipity.

It was a simple movie really, relying mainly on the charm of Julie Delpy, the streets of Vienna and the conversation between the young idealistic French girl and her jaded-before-his-time-but-still-open-to-the-wonders-of-meeting-a-beautiful-french-girl-on-a-train, Amerian new-found friend/lover.

Celine: No, then it sounds like a male fantasy. Meet a French girl on the train, fuck her, and never see her again.

But mainly it relied on exhilaration. The exhilaration of the audience as it echoed and followed the exhilaration of two young people connecting with each other - almost against all odds. A connection we all search for but so rarely find - and when we do, we can only wonder and bask in it for as long as the connection lasts, though frequently it is too brief. As with Jesse and Celine, who have one night before Celine leaves for Paris. But they promise to meet again 6 months later at a specific time and place and on that note the movie ends leaving us to wonder at the outcome of their tale.

Celine: I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.

Their conversations through the streets of Vienna meanders through the profound, the inane, the ridiculous, in fact through the unusual nooks and crannies that two people who have met each other for the first time take. We all love that blank slate of a new person- to have the opportunity to paint ourselves in the hues that we have always seen ourselves in. Far too often, in the people we already know, these colours get tarnished, soiled and muddied turning into a painting we do not recognise and most times even abhor.

Jesse: There's these breeds of monkeys, right, and all they do is have sex, all the time, you know? And they turn out to be the least violent, the most peaceful, the most happy, you know? So maybe fooling around isn't so bad.

Celine: Are you talking about monkeys?
Jesse: Yes I'm talking about monkeys.
Celine: Ah, I thought so...

Thankfully, we were not left to wonder about the fate of Celine and Jesse too long, Linklater and his two leads collaborated and came up with Before Sunset nine years later. Unsurprisingly, in a brilliant move of cinematic conceit, Jesse and Celine meet again - nine years later. Through a series of unavoidable events, they had missed each other at the designated rendezvous point and since they had not taken each other's respective contact details (they tempted fate and fate rarely rewards such disrespect), they never found each other in the intervening 9 years. That is until Jesse comes up with a brilliant idea to write a book about his one-night encounter with Celine and is soon a celebrated writer (ironic since Celine is the writer/dreamer of the pair). He has a reading in Paris which Celine comes to. His expression when he sees her again for the first time in 9 years says it all.

Jesse: You want to know why I wrote that stupid book?
Celine: Why?
Jesse: So that you might come to a reading in Paris and I could walk up to you and ask, "Where the fuck were you?"
Celine: [laughing] No - you thought I'd be here today?
Jesse: I'm serious. I think I wrote it, in a way, to try to find you.
Celine: Okay, that's - I know that's not true, but that's sweet of you to say.
Jesse: I think it is true.

The movie is filmed in real-time and covers the 1.5 hours until Jesse's flight back to the States. The pair wander the streets of Paris much as they did Vienna all those years ago. They go on a boat-ride on the Seine and despite the myriad of emotional defences constructed in the last 9 years - connect, much as they did before. It is quite obvious that though Jesse is married with a child, Celine still fills his mind.

Jesse: In the months leading up to my wedding, I was thinking about you all the time. I mean, even on my way there; I'm in the car, a buddy of mine is driving me downtown and I'm staring out the window, and I think I see you, not far from the church, right? Folding up an umbrella and walking into a deli on the corner of 13th and Broadway. And I thought I was going crazy, but now I think it probably was you.
Celine: I lived on 11th and Broadway.
Jesse: You see?

On Celine's part, though she has moved on from that night in Vienna, life has not been as kind as she expected it to be (remember the fortune-teller?) and she is more brittle somehow - almost blaming Jesse for their not having met and her life after that, even though the fault lies with her. That was hard for me. She was so much the cooler character in Before Sunrise. The one more open to the possibility of magic and love, though faintly wary as well. It was almost a relief to realise that she was just protecting herself, really, from Jesse - trying not to show how much she cared. But even that was kind of sad. That life had battered down this wonderful, luminous, talented, beautiful woman.

I wondered, do women become bitter and brittle if they do not find/ lose the love of their lives? God knows we try not to be.

Celine: The past is the past. It was meant to be that way.
Jesse: What, you really believe that? That everything's fated?
Celine: Well, you know, the world might be less free than we think.
Jesse: Yeah?
Celine: Yeah, when given these exact circumstances, that's what will happen every time: two part hydrogen, one part oxygen, you get water every time.
Jesse: No, no, I - I - I mean what if your grandmother had lived a week longer, or, you know, or passed away a week earlier, days even. You know things might have been different. I believe that.
Celine: You can't think like that, it's...
Jesse: No, I mean, I know you shouldn't on most things, but - It's just, on this one it seemed like something was off, you know?

But the wonder and amazement in Jesse's eyes whevever he looks at Celine, almost exactly the same expression he had 9 years ago in Vienna, gradually bring Celine out. Her poison spent she shares with him her hopes and fears. And as Before Sunrise resonated so much in that it actualised my most cherished fantasy, Before Sunset vocalised my deepest secrets...

Celine: I was having this awful nightmare that I was 32. And then I woke up and I was 23. So relieved. And then I woke up for real, and I was 32.

P.S. : This post was actually supposed to be about the new Julie Delpy movie, 2 Days in Paris in which she writes, directs, co-produces and composes music for (seriously with such talented people in the world, one might as well kill oneself), but trust me to get distracted. In her latest, Delpy plays a French photgrapher from New York (Marion) stopping by Paris with her American boyfriend (Jack) on their way back from Vienna (yes it is very similiar to the "Befores" but a completely different movie!). Hilarious shenannigans abound, especially when Jack meets Marion's parents (Delpy's real-life parents) and her various ex-boyfriends. But it also a rather touching and poignant picture of how despite recognising that we are extremely flawed beings we keep believing that we are deserving of love and go on trying to find and keep love in this day and age. And how that is an extremely courageous act indeed.

Marion: It always fascinated me how people go from loving you madly to nothing at all, nothing. It hurts so much. When I feel someone is going to leave me, I have a tendency to break up first before I get to hear the whole thing. Here it is. One more, one less. Another wasted love story. I really love this one. When I think that its over, that I'll never see him again like this... well yes, I'll bump into him, we'll meet our new boyfriend and girlfriend, act as if we had never been together, then we'll slowly think of each other less and less until we forget each other completely. Almost. Always the same for me. Break up, break down. Drunk up, fool around. Meet one guy, then another, fuck around. Forget the one and only. Then after a few months of total emptiness start again to look for true love, desperately look everywhere and after two years of loneliness meet a new love and swear it is the one, until that one is gone as well. There's a moment in life where you can't recover any more from another break-up. And even if this person bugs you sixty percent of the time, well you still can’t live without him. And even if he wakes you up every day by sneezing right in your face, well you love his sneezes more than anyone else's kisses.