Last night, I watched Before Sunrise, a movie I’ve loved since my brother introduced me to it several years ago. Ethan Hawke’s character, Jesse, is telling Celine about his attempt to speak French in Paris. He is waiting in line to buy a train ticket, mentally practicing the French word for “ticket” (un billet). But when he gets to the booth, his mind goes blank. “All I can manage to say is ‘Yeah, hi, um, I need a ticket to get me from…”
That’s going to be me, isn’t it? I’ll be all pumped to finally use my French in a café and I’ll open my mouth and some mangled sentence will come out and the waiter will look at me like I just spoke Swahili. And then I’ll get all embarrassed and speak nothing but English for the rest of the trip. I feel totally lame already.
OOOOOoooh, Before Sunrise is one of my FAVORITE movies, followed close by Before Sunset, which follows the same two characters 10 years later. Such wonderful character studies.