This book contains three of Tennessee Williams’ plays – the title play Sweet Bird of Youth, The Night of the Iguana, and Period of Adjustment. In Sweet Bird of Youth, a wannabe actor named Chance Wayne, returns to the town of his youth with an ageing actress. Chance wants to get back with his one true love, Heavenly Finley, but her family – and most of the rest of the town are not happy, and the violence simmering under the surface threatens to erupt.
In Period of Adjustment, newlyweds George and Isabel visit George’s old Korean war friend Ralph. The marriage has not got off to a good start, and it soon transpires that Ralph has marital problems of his own.
In The Night of the Iguana, a disgraced priest named Lawrence Shannon, has taken on a job escorting coach tours, and brings a coach load of his charges to a Mexican hotel, where he knows the owner. The all-women clientele on the coach hate Shannon as he has had relations with a 16 year old girl on the tour. Another lady named Hannah checks into the hotel with her elderly grandfather, and there is a connection between her and Shannon.
The theme that ripples through each of these plays is frustration at missed opportunities, and regret at bad decisions, which often manifests itself as anger. The writing is beautiful at times, and incredibly sad. But worth reading. Tennessee Williams really digs down into the human psyche and writes without judgement.
Not the most uplifting of reads, but definitely well worth a look.
I can’t emphasise this enough – if you are wondering what DID happen six months after the events of the preceding film Before Sunrise, and whether or not Jesse and Celine did meet up as planned, then DO NOT read this review until after watching this film. It is pretty impossible to review this film without talking about what happened in the nine years between events of Before Sunrise and events of Before Sunset.
So as mentioned, Before Sunset takes place nine years after Before Sunrise (both in the story, and in real life; the first film was made in 1995, and this was made in 2004). In Before Sunrise, Jesse and Celine meet on a train in Europe, and end up spending the evening together, walking around Vienna, discussing everything they can think of, and gradually falling in love. At the end of the film they decide to meet again in six months, at the train station in Vienna.
The sequel is set in Paris, and starts with Jesse, who is now a published author, having written a novel about an American boy and a French girl who meet on a train and spend a night together in Vienna – sound familiar? – giving an interview in the Shakespeare and Co. Bookshop. (Note: This is a REAL bookshop in Paris. I have visited there, and would recommend…in fact insist…that if you are a book lover and are ever in Paris, you MUST visit this shop. Really. It’s incredible – you literally spend all day there, reading, browsing, shopping, talking.) Anyway, at the end of the interview, he looks up and sees Celine in the shop. They decide to spend the time before Jesse’s flight home, walking around Paris, and catching up – because, as it transpires, they did not meet up as planned six months after meeting on the train. It’s clear that there is still a connection and an attraction between the two, but with Jesse now married with a child, things are not as simple as they were nine years earlier.
I loved Before Sunrise, but I definitely preferred Before Sunset. It’s a sadder film in a way – both characters are older and wiser; they have both been bruised by life, and have realised that things don’t always turn out the way you want or expect them to. Jesse is in a loveless marriage, and Celine has been in a number of unfulfilling relationships. They have lost hope to some extent, that life will always be good in the end. Both of them regret not meeting up when they had arranged to (it is quickly revealed that Jesse did go to the meeting place, but Celine couldn’t as her grandmother died a few days earlier, and she was at her grandmother’s funeral). In fact, life’s disappointments seem positively etched on Jesse’s face. It has to be said that Ethan Hawke does not look well here because he’s just so scrawny, but somehow that fits his character who is disillusioned with his life, and cannot forget the beautiful French girl he met years before. But for all that, there is optimism too. As Jesse says, his problems are much bigger now than before, but he is better equipped to deal with them. Celine is harder, more brittle, but still vulnerable and emotional.
As in Before Sunrise, the acting is wonderful. There are other people in the film, but for the vast majority of it, it’s just Hawke and Delphy exploring Paris, and talking, reconnecting. It plays out almost in real time (the film is just 80 minutes long, as Jesse has about that much time before he has to leave to catch a flight home), and the conversation seems so natural. It was scripted, but it feels unscripted. And very real and believable.
And of course, there’s Paris itself. They don’t visit the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe for example, but instead go to perhaps lesser known places – after all Celine lives there, and Jesse isn’t really interested in sight-seeing, and it really works. It still shows Paris off as the beautiful city it is, while leaving you free to concentrate on the two main characters.
The ending is again ambiguous (to me anyway – many viewers think that it is not so). It doesn’t wrap things up in a neat package, but almost lets you decide for yourself what happens – at least until last year, when the third film, Before Midnight, came out, which again picks up their story another nine years later.
This is just a beautiful, romantic film, laced with poignancy and regret, as well as the anticipation that the two feel upon meeting each other again after having such an effect on each other. If you like films with more talk than action, that make you really feel like you are there in the moment watching two people getting to know each other again, then I would definitely recommend this. But watch the first one beforehand!
Year of release: 2004
Director: Richard Linklater
Producers: Richard Linklater, John Sloss, Anne Walker-McBay, Isabelle Coulet
Writers: Richard Linklater, Julie Delphy, Ethan Hawke, Kim Krizan
One morning, mild-mannered Harold Fry receives a letter from a former colleague named Queenie, who he has not seen for some 20 years. The letters informs him that she is in a hospice, and is dying of terminal cancer. Harold writes a letter back, and sets out to post it, but when he gets to the postbox, he decides to keep walking on to the next one. And then he decides to walk a bit further, and his short walk eventually turns into a journey on foot from his home in Devon, to where Queenie is, in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Though the going gets tough, Harold knows that somehow or other he has to walk to Queenie, and that as long as he keeps walking, she will keep living.
I had heard so many good things about this book, and was really looking forward to reading it. The story is lovely, although a little far-fetched occasionally. Harold meets many other people en route to save Queenie, and he realises that like him, everyone has regrets and worries in their lives, and that sometimes what we see on the surface tells us nothing about a person.
For Harold, the journey is metaphorical as much- as it is physical. He believes that his walk can save Queenie, but he also seems to be seeking redemption for himself. As his walk unfolds in the pages, so does his history, and we learn all about the tragedies he has faced, the situations which he wishes he could change, his regrets about his relationship with his son, and the cause of a rift between himself and his wife Maureen.
At times the book is achingly sad, and at other times oddly uplifting. I liked it a lot, but I was not as taken with it as I expected to be. (I had read reviews from people saying that the story had caused them to re-evaluate their lives, and it had made them cry.) Having read so many positive things about the book, I would say that this puts me in the minority as it did not move me to tears, and while I would certainly recommend it, I would not say it particularly moved me.
It’s still an enjoyable story though, and I will be looking out for more by Rachel Joyce.
Between the Pages 