Why didn't she send a friend to meet Jesse at the station?
If she was conscious, she could have made some type of arrangement to let Jesse know why she couldn't be there. Just sayin'.
shareI agree. As much as I like the two movies, that aspect of the backstory of Before Sunset has always bothered me. Céline's failure to send someone to meet Jesse, or even to just leave a message for him at the station information desk and have him paged to pick the message up, is either (1) a very weak plot point, (2) evidence that at that time she didn't care about him very much, or (3) evidence that she's a flaky, incompetent human being who Jesse should be wary about letting into his life, for fear that she might mess up their life together with more flaky, incompetent behavior. It pains me to raise that third possibility about a character who's as intensely appealing as Céline is, but I don't see how you can avoid considering it.
shareThey agreed to meet again in *Vienna*, Celine lives in Paris. It is not as easy as you think to send someone 600 miles away to receive someone whom the only thing she can identify is his name (Celine didn't even have a photo of Jesse)
shareOkay, granted, for Céline to send someone to meet Jesse in her place would have been difficult and expensive. But the other option I mentioned in my post--leaving a message for Jesse at the station information desk, and having him paged to pick the message up--would have been quite effective, maybe even more so than sending someone to meet him, and it would have cost almost nothing.
shareBut the other option I mentioned in my post--leaving a message for Jesse at the station information desk, and having him paged to pick the message up--
If you think about it, her grandmothers funeral was in the day that they would meet, so she probably died in the day before, and Celine was expecting to go to the station herself, so she couldn't be prepared to do what you said share
i think even if sending a friend or leaving jesse a page at the train station in vienna were options, celine didn't do either of those partly because she was afraid; afraid that despite the passion of their promise in the moment all that time ago, his feelings may have waned or maybe he simply forgot. you go all that way (even further for him!) and the other person may not be there. to deal with that loneliness/sadness standing on a train platform all alone seems hurtful. imagine sitting around, waiting for someone, not knowing when or IF they're coming while people who have places to be and people to meet are rushing all around you. just imagining it, it feels bad! i feel terrible for jesse.
for either of them to show up without having been in contact with one another for so long is very exciting but also a huge risk because you could so easily be disappointed by a failed arrival or just the effects life has had on the other during the time you were apart. if i were celine, i think part of me would expect that jesse wouldn't show up, but I'm a known pessimist most times.
if someone meant that much youd send a friend. or call the station and ask them to make an announcement....
share[deleted]
If she had cared about him she would have sent a friend to find him. She didn't care enough to do it. She could have told her friend that he is an American, his height, coloring, and age. It wouldn't have been difficult if she had been the least bit interested.
It is also very easy to leave a message at the train station. People do it all of the time.
We don't know for sure that her grandmother's funeral was on that day. She said it was, but she lied to Jesse about many things. The funeral date wasn't confirmed.
She didn't care enough to do it. She could have told her friend that he is an American, his height, coloring, and age. It wouldn't have been difficult if she had been the least bit interested.
His coloring It's not like he's green.
I sort of agree but on the other hand it seems that Celine truly believed they would still some day meet whether she appeared in Vienna or not. Like she says in BEFORE SUNSET, when she lived in New York she thought they would perhaps bump into each other even though that would be next to impossible. And they did eventually meet!
I don't mean to impose, but I am the Ocean. share
James J. Kim-2: Airports are, needless to say, much larger and more decentralized than train stations on average, which makes it much harder to page someone in the one than in the other. Just because paging you in a Texas airport didn't work well, that doesn't mean that there would have likely been any great difficulty paging Jesse in a Vienna train station. And I've never heard anyone claim that pagings have to be restricted to major emergencies: in fact, I doubt that the information desk staff would normally know the specific reason for a paging at all. Céline could have just requested (by phone, from France, of course) that, starting at 6:00 p.m. (their designated meeting time), an English-language announcement be periodically made asking that "Jesse" come to the information desk; and at the information desk there'd be a note waiting for him, asking him to phone her. And if he somehow didn't hear the page, or didn't hear it clearly, most likely it hardly would have mattered, since one of the first things it probably would have occurred to him to do, once he'd waited for an hour or so at Track 9 (their designated meeting spot), would have been to go to the information desk to see if a note had been left for him. It was almost universal knowledge, in the era before cell phones became near-ubiquitous, that that's what a person should do in a situation like that.
PacificHeights: You're right when you say "It is also very easy to leave a message at the train station. People do it all of the time"--or at the very least, they used to do it all the time, back before cell phones became near-ubiquitous.
CasseroleWorshipper: I disagree with your claim that "it seems that C[é]line truly believed they would still some day meet whether she appeared in Vienna or not". All she said was that, once she happened to be living in New York, it occurred to her that she might accidentally run into Jesse. She was hardly counting on it, either before her New York sojourn or during or after it.
1. In most countries, train stations don't allow people to request for personal message announcements because the line must be available at all times for important announcements like train delays, service changes, or emergency announcements.
2. How could she possibly find out the telephone number for that train station in 1995, a time where there wasn't much available on the internet? It was already very hard for people to find the number for their local train station's office. Moreover in a far away country. It's not like they're advertised in Paris' edition of Yellow Pages.
3. She doesn't speak German well. Austria wasn't (still isn't) an English speaking country. Civil workers (or employees at the train station) in Austria would not normally able to speak English, nor French.
4. Her grandmother's death was abrupt. Just a few days before the date they'd set to meet. Of course, she'd also be very much occupied with the funerals and other things.
5. I believe they didn't even know each other's last name after they said goodbye in Vienna.
It was almost impossible for her to make any arrangement to let Jesse know she wasn't coming.
comp_networth2004: All but the last of your points are asinine, and moreover they're infected with the typical cretinous modern attitude of "Before the Internet, people were barely capable of doing anything at all", an attitude that, I'm sorry to say, will probably only get worse as time goes on, at least until the overall intelligence of humanity is increased by genetic engineering.
1. What evidence do you have for your claim that "In most countries, train stations don't allow people to request for personal message announcements because the line must be available at all times for important announcements like train delays, service changes, or emergency announcements". I've never heard of such a thing. It's always been my understanding that occasional simple, short public-address announcements of "Would so-and-so please report to such-and-such-a-place" are a commonplace of airports, train stations, and bus stations worldwide. It's not as if any of those types of places have such a constant stream of announcements of "delays, service changes, or emergenc[ies]" that an occasional three-second announcement asking someone to report to the information desk would cause any significant disruption. And anyway, an announcement wouldn't have been strictly necessary: as I've mentioned before, I think we can presume that Jesse, being the reasonably sensible person that he is, almost certainly checked at the information desk after an hour or two of waiting to see whether there was a message from Céline there.
2. For a person in France to find out the phone number of a given train station in Vienna would have been easy in 1994 (not 1995); for that matter, it would also have been easy at any time during the preceding hundred years or so. Possible sources in 1994: (1) A train timetable. (2) A customer service representative of the SNCF (French national railroad system), in person or over the phone. (3) A published tourist guidebook or railroad guidebook. (4) The phone book collection in any large library. (5) The Minitel (a French predecessor to the Internet that was widespread beginning in the eighties).
3. In 2010, 58% of Austrians had some competence in English. Obviously that didn't happen all at once. Getting employees with English competence to staff the information desk at a major Vienna train station would not have been a problem in the late twentieth century.
4. I've been to four grandparent funerals, and basically all I had to do was show up: other people did all the planning. It's unlikely that Céline's experience of her grandmother's funeral would have been much different, particularly since her relatives, if they had any common sense and couth at all, would have been reluctant to pull her away from her studies for the task of funeral planning. If Céline was still genuinely interested in Jesse at that time but couldn't make a few short, simple phone calls to arrange for him to be contacted, then I'd say the main possible explanations are (a) deficient plotting on the part of Linklater, Delpy, Hawke, and Krizan, or (b) major flakiness and incompetence on the part of Céline, perhaps to the point where she arguably doesn't really deserve to be with Jesse, as appealing a person as she might seem to be in other respects.
5. Yes, we've always known that they didn't exchange last names. That shouldn't have been a problem for Jesse, since he knew Céline was a student at the Sorbonne (and I think she may have even mentioned what her field was), so he could simply have gone to the Sorbonne and asked around for her. The fact that he didn't do so suggests that he took her failure to show up in Vienna--and her failure to leave a note for him, assuming he checked--as a rejection, and didn't want to humiliate himself by chasing after her. For Céline's part, I'll grant that, after the missed meeting in Vienna, for her to try to find Jesse without a last name might have been very difficult, though the degree of difficulty would have depended on what specific clues about himself he gave her during their many hours of conversation (far more conversation than we filmgoers heard, obviously). Let's also remember that the events of the film take place only about a half-year prior to the explosion of popularity of the Internet; so if Céline hadn't been able to find Jesse using traditional means, she could have, starting around early 1995 and continuing as the Internet and the information on it improved, used various Web-searching efforts to try to find him--if she'd been motivated enough and competent enough to do so.
Woah, thanks for the ad hominems. I actually felt sorry for you when I read your posts. You're so persistent in believing the negative about other people. That made me think that you're probably very lonely and bitter. But, now I don't care anymore. This post will be my last message to you. I can't waste time with people like you.
1.
What evidence do you have for your claim that "In most countries, train stations don't allow people to request for personal message announcements because the line must be available at all times for important announcements like train delays, service changes, or emergency announcements". I've never heard of such a thing. It's always been my understanding that occasional simple, short public-address announcements of "Would so-and-so please report to such-and-such-a-place" are a commonplace of airports, train stations, and bus stations worldwide.
Airports? I specifically mentioned train stations. I know airports do allow paging requests. What evidence do you have that train stations, not airports, accept requests through telephone call to make a paging announcement? I checked with the local train station in my area, and they don't allow that kind of request. There's my evidence. To be more exact, do you have proof that the train station in Vienna accepts paging requests?
It's not as if any of those types of places have such a constant stream of announcements of "delays, service changes, or emergenc[ies]"..
I said the announcement line need to be available at all times in case of emergency. In no way did I mean they have constant stream of announcements. Like talking to a little child here.
2. She couldn't have obtained a Vienna train timetable, and the international ones don't normally include each train station's phone number. Finding a guide book that provides that particular train station's phone number isn't exactly an easy task either. Only large libraries have phone books, it wouldn't be easy to find in one too, specifically to get an Austrian phone listing. Not everyone subscribed to the Minitel, and there's no telling if it did have access to complete Austrian phone directories. Getting such information from the SNCF might be the least troublesome. Then again, people don't always get a straight answer after asking a railway company for the contact number of another railway company overseas. It's unlikely she would have had time to think about all these ideas and go through with them while being deeply devastated by the loss of her "older self". She did mention in the first film how she's very close with her grandmother so much that she felt like she's her younger version.
3. I'll give you that in Vienna most people in industries that deal with foreign tourists can understand English.
4.
I've been to four grandparent funerals, and basically all I had to do was show up: other people did all the planning. It's unlikely that Céline's experience of her grandmother's funeral would have been much different, ...
This assumption is a flaw in your logic. Different families have different situations. You can't possibly know how it was like for Celine. I repeat, that she was very close to her grandmother.
5. You're digressing from the subject. What happens after that December isn't relevant to the current discussion. Not knowing his last name made it so much harder for her (in that short amount of time between her grandmother's death to the set up date) to let Jesse know she wasn't coming. That's that.
You're also wrong about this :
The fact that he didn't do so suggests that he took her failure to show up in Vienna--and her failure to leave a note for him, assuming he checked--as a rejection, and didn't want to humiliate himself by chasing after her.
To assume that his fear of humiliation is the main reason he didn't try to find her is just wrong. He didn't have money to go after her at that time. He mentioned that he was forced to borrow money from his dad. He couldn't have gone to Sorbonne and spent what little money was still in his pocket to try to investigate where she was, as she could have graduated and moved on somewhere else by the time he'd gather enough money to buy tickets to Sorbonne. share
Honestly, I think you're all being a bit pessimistic and judgmental of this character.
Firstly, her grandmother had just died (i saw no evidence she was lying about this fact, and i certainly don't think the filmmakers were trying to say that - she only lies about little embarassing things like having sex etc. in a jokey way that she later admits to) so she was probably a touch distracted by the whole thing, especially since we;re shown throughout how close she was to her grandmother.
Secondly, she wasn't even sure Jesse was definitely going to be there - shown by her asking if he was and believing him when he initially lied about not going - so she might have felt a bit ridiculous sending a friend or even a message to be announced.
Finally, as romantic and amazing and out there romancey these films are all about, if it were real life, which they are trying to portay, she probably would have felt crazy sending a friend/leaving a message because it might have just felt like a crazy sort of fantasy day to her 6 months down the line.
OK, let's think it through. They agreed on the date to meet again in Vienna but there is no way for Celine to know when Jesses will be arriving at the train station or his itinerary prior to reaching Vienna. So if you want to ask the train station to make an announcement, when do you want them to announce? Periodically? I doubt there are many train staff to handle request like this if you have travelled in Europe by train before.
sharejobseeker95479: Céline and Jesse had agreed to meet at Track 9 at 6:00 p.m. Céline could have requested (by phone, from France, of course) that, starting at 6, a simple English-language announcement be periodically made asking that "Jesse" come to the information desk. I can't imagine that the information desk staff at a major Vienna train station would have been incapable of fulfilling that request. At the desk there'd be a note waiting, asking Jesse to phone Céline. And if he somehow didn't hear the page, or didn't hear it clearly, most likely it hardly would have mattered, since one of the first things it probably would have occurred to him to do, once he'd waited for an hour or so, would have been to go to the information desk to see if a note had been left for him. It was almost universal knowledge, in the era before cell phones became near-ubiquitous, that that's what a person should do in a situation like that.
shareCéline's failure to send someone to meet Jesse, or even to just leave a message for him at the station information desk and have him paged to pick the message up, is either (1) a very weak plot point, (2) evidence that at that time she didn't care about him very much, or (3) evidence that she's a flaky, incompetent human being who Jesse should be wary about letting into his life, for fear that she might mess up their life together with more flaky, incompetent behavior.OK, Celine wouldn't know the exact time that Jesse would be there, so is the information desk suppose to page him every minute?
Rodents of Unusual Size?...I don't think they exist. share
Céline and Jesse agreed that they'd meet at Track 9 at 6:00 p.m. So Céline could ask to have an announcement made every twenty or thirty minutes starting at 6, asking "Jesse" to come to the information desk. There'd be a note there telling him to call Céline at such-and-such a phone number in France.
If something went wrong on Jesse's end and he was hours late showing up at the station, presumably he'd have enough sense to immediately go to the information desk to see if Céline had left a note for him there.
éline and Jesse agreed that they'd meet at Track 9 at 6:00 p.m. So Céline could ask to have an announcement made every twenty or thirty minutes starting at 6, asking "Jesse" to come to the information desk. There'd be a note there telling him to call Céline at such-and-such a phone number in France.People sometimes think of what they should have done or said when it's too late though.
If something went wrong on Jesse's end and he was hours late showing up at the station, presumably he'd have enough sense to immediately go to the information desk to see if Céline had left a note for him there.Except that he said in the movie that he only put up signs with his number and the hotel he's staying at. He never said he did what you talked about him doing.
Rodents of Unusual Size?...I don't think they exist. share
You're quite right that people sometimes think of the right thing to do too late; but then our sympathy for Céline has to diminish when we consider how marked her failure to think of the right thing to do was in this case. I mean, she is supposed to be smart, right? And it seems to me that, once she and Jesse had finally gotten together, she owed Jesse a lifetime of humility and deferentiality for having disrupted his life so much with her great mistake. That's one reason her somewhat selfish and unpleasant attitude and behavior in Before Midnight were particularly hard for me to accept.
My comments about Jesse were restricted to what he should have done if he'd been hours late, not what he actually did; but the information desk was an important resource either way. Could it be that, in the Before Sunset dialog, he doesn't mention checking at the information desk just because it's so implicitly obvious he must have done so that it's not even worth mentioning to Céline, and he's too polite to put her on the spot by pointing out her failure to send him a note there? I like to think that that's the case. If somehow we were to find out--say, in a line of dialog in a future Before movie--that he never did check at the information desk, well, then that'd be one of several things reducing my respect for him as a character.
Anyone who thinks that the staff at any train station would agree to have a random personal message (of no real urgency) from a random person abroad, who's not even a customer, intended for another random person (just 'Jesse' cannot be used to identify an existing customer of the railway company) from yet another country to be broadcasted every twenty or thirty minutes without any credibility (or compensation) from the requester, is a fool at most. If people were allowed to do this for free, the number of prank calls alone to the train station would be highly disruptive for the services to run properly. Even at airports, paging assistance is only available to paying customers (or corporates) and not random people.
To treat a person's failure to come up with a particular solution as a sign of their lack of care is also another foolishness. This behavior is similar to a spoiled brat who cries to their mother because she bought them an IPhone 5c instead of 5s. It is laughable. Like The_ROUSes said, people sometimes think of what they should have done or said when it's too late. It doesn't mean that they don't care.
Celine not being able to let Jesse know she wasn't coming is closer to reality than her being able to find out exactly how to contact him as if she's a character from a Bourne film. This is also consistent to her character. She's not super smart, a bit irrational and independent. The writers decided that they should only meet after nine years, instead of six months, to emphasize the strength of their love connection. Not knowing each other's contact details or personal information, fear of rejection and humiliation, added with other circumstantial problems (Jesse having knocked up his girlfriend) kept them apart for those years. But deep down they both actually wanted to be together and probably kept hoping to bump into each other somewhere. The writers chose her grandmother's death because of the nature of her relationship with the grandmother. Her grandmother was probably the one person she thought was more important than anyone in her life at that time. Coincidences like this happen sometimes in real life, more often than anyone here might think. It is a rare coincidence, which makes their story even more special.
So, I'd suggest to stop all the nonsense about how she could and should have been able to let Jesse know the funeral as if you've never made mistakes in your life. It not only would ruin the film, the proponents of this idea most likely can't even write a story better than what this film's writers have done.
Honestly, I think you're all being a bit pessimistic and judgmental of this character.
Firstly, her grandmother had just died (i saw no evidence she was lying about this fact, and i certainly don't think the filmmakers were trying to say that - she only lies about little embarassing things like having sex etc. in a jokey way that she later admits to) so she was probably a touch distracted by the whole thing, especially since we;re shown throughout how close she was to her grandmother.
Secondly, she wasn't even sure Jesse was definitely going to be there - shown by her asking if he was and believing him when he initially lied about not going - so she might have felt a bit ridiculous sending a friend or even a message to be announced.
Finally, as romantic and amazing and out there romancey these films are all about, if it were real life, which they are trying to portay, she probably would have felt crazy sending a friend/leaving a message because it might have just felt like a crazy sort of fantasy day to her 6 months down the line.