Short version:
Phillippe the taxi driver leaves. Jesse and Celine make wild rabbit love for ten days straight. On the eleventh day, Jesse's publishing company sends a second driver threatening that if he doesn't come with him back to New York they'll drop his contract. Determined not to give up on romantic love a second time, Jesse and Celine promise to meet again in Paris in six months. Jesse flies back to New York. In the meantime, Celine's boyfriend comes back from the West Bank and decides to move out. Jesse breaks up with his wife. On Christmas Eve, Jesse and his son move in with Celine in her tiny apartment. After spending another ten days straight in bed (Jesse's kid conveniently entertained by the other tenants in the apartment block and therefore is spared his dad's embarrassing appetite for sex), they celebrate the New Year in sensuous style and snow. In the Spring they look for a new apartment and move in with Jesse's kid and the cat. Jesse writes bestselling novels, Celine becomes an award winning photographer. They adopt a child and have natural twins and they all live happily ever after!
Long version (with the actual movie inserted towards the end!):
Taking up the narrative thread after looking for a new apartment...They find the new apartment and live happily for a while (having lots of sex). However moving to Paris is not as easy as it seems. Jesse's kid (let's call him Ted) is not doing well at school and not adjusting to Parisian life. Jesse also has issues with learning the language and thinks all Parisians are rude. Celine suggests perhaps they try New York - she'll try and get humanitarian work there. They pack up and head back to New York but this time Celine hates New York. She can't find work there because she's not a citizen and the hustle and bustle of the city is too much to bear after the charm of Paris. Jesse is stressed now because his ex-wife is trying to get custody of Ted. Jesse's writing career on the other hand is doing really well, his book about their incident is flying off the shelves. Everywhere they go he is stopped. He becomes a bit of a dick with all the attention. Celine is pissed off because she used to be a humanitarian worker with a good salary and a purpose in the world and now she's reduced to a helpless immigrant/wife. They fight a lot, and get stopped in the street a lot because of the publicity. One day Jesse goes on a promotional tour to Chicago to see a woman and while he's away Celine decides to leave.
Celine heads back to Paris and picks up her old job working for the humanitarian company Green Cross. However she doesn't feel quite right and when they offer her the opportunity to go to Kosovo to see the work that they're doing there she takes that up. Going to Kosovo to look at all their political struggles and so forth and their poor health system she sees things she wishes she'd never seen. It's a dark time. But slowly she works with the community and sees how her work is paying off. It's a dangerous time and she wakes up to the sound of bombing all the time. But it's rewarding, and the Kosovonian (? Kosovon??) men are cute and generally has her pick. One day she sets up a school and the press come to interview her. It makes international headlines.
Jesse, who has now taken up post with the nanny he was having an affair with in Chicago, sees her on TV. Wanting to make one last effort for romantic love, he flies over to Kosovo, even though he's scared shitless. Dodging militia, he meets up with her at the orphanage. Determined not to fall for his charms this time and unimpressed with the way he's been looking after himself, she rejects his advances. Jesse explains to her that it's a lot for him to come here, he doesn't come to scary civil war countries for nothing. Celine doesn't have a bar of it. She sends Jesse back to the US with his tail between his legs and goes back to the orphanage.
Jesse returns to the US and back to Chicago. The nanny gets pregnant, and, now being 38, he decides to face up to his responsibilities and marries her (oh dear this sounds a bit too familiar). Ted is living in NY and is at high school being a jock. Depressed and unhappy with his life, he fuels this into his writing career, which although is still healthy from sales of the book, is dwindling. He writes and he writes but despite his writing nothing comes out. He has an affair with an air hostess who promises to give him frequent flyer points. She doesn't and he's devastated. His father dies of liver cancer when he goes to visit him in Texas. Jesse tries to get funding for a movie based on his relationship with his father in Texas. He gets the money but it bombs and he becomes even more in debt. He hits rock bottom, starts drinking and starts missing his child maintenance payments. He can't pay. Lawyers start coming after him suing for bankruptcy. The nanny has run away a long time ago. Jesse, with the last savings he has, buys a ticket to Europe for one last ditch at creative enlightenment. He writes a memoir based on these years while living a monastic life in Geneva where his French improves greatly. This memoir, finally takes off with his publisher in New York, and while it's not a major success, it's enough for them to commission him to write another one.
One evening, with his life vaguely back on track, he is walking down the street when he thinks he sees a blonde beautiful blonde woman walking with a black haired child.
Celine, walking with her adopted Vietnamese daughter, sees him too. They sit down at a restaurant at night where they proceed to have a two hour conversation that consists of the bulk of the movie (which moves from the restaurant to a wander by the river at night time to eventually, Celine's apartment. Geez, that's exactly like Before Sunset). It's been years since they've seen each other. She talks about her life while they were apart. While in Kosovo she'd fallen in love with a local guy and moved in with him. They were looking after the orphanage together and she moved in with him. However, after a couple of years of living with him she realised that her time in Kosovo was over. Leaving him she goes travelling through Vietnam and falls in love with a local girl at an orphanage. She decides to adopt this girl and puts in her application for adoption. While she's waiting she meets a humanitarian worker called Vince at the photography essay exhibition she's been helping curate and falls madly in love. They swear to move to Geneva together to continue humanitarian work there. While still waiting for the adoption application to come through Celine goes back to Paris to sort some things out. While she's in Paris, Vince, who's on assignment in Afghanistan, is shot and killed. Devastated, Celine flies to Vietnam to pick up her daughter. After coming back to Paris and settling in, she decides to go to Geneva anyway, as a sort of tribute to Vince. In Geneva she discovers that her photoessay exhibition was so successful she can make a career out of it. After settling in with her daughter she takes up photography full-time and becomes a small success.
Jesse is delighted to see her. After all these years he's finally realises that love is not a series of conversations wandering around Europe in beautiful light but a) being got b) recognising that there are only a few people who get you and therefore staying with the person who got you c) working at this got relationship and d) putting up with their shit and realising also that love is as much about timing and chance as it is about being right for each other. Finally talking their shit out over the night, he gets down on one knee and proposes. Celine's daughter, Nicolette (haha, what a great name) giggles away and eats her Genevian bread. After a whole lot of darkness and ups and downs Celine finally says yes. End of movie - but in the proposing the projected future is this: With the savings that Jesse has from his memoirs and the money that Celine has from her photography they move with Nicolette into a castle (I don't know, what do Genevians have??). They bring Jesse's son over from his second marriage (who conveniently doesn't mind Geneva since it's the city of peace and he goes to an international school) and settle into Genevian life. They live happily writing novels and memoirs (Jesse) and teaching/exhibiting photography (Celine). A couple of years later, at the age of 41, Celine and Jesse have twins. Finally, they now live happily ever after.
Haha. Well they have to have a happy ending surely!
Such a weird coincidence, Kylie and I watched both films for the first time just the other night.
ReplyDeleteI have to say, it's made a real impact on me! I've never seen characters on screen that I so readily identify with. And yes, this is how I imagine falling in love is really like. It unfolds over the course of hours and hours of conversation in which there is cosmic, organic connection.
x