Romance in youth seen through the eyes of an older man

Rating: 3/10 (7 May 2014)

To be honest, I'm not one for romance, be it in the streets, in books or on screen. However, I like to consider myself as an open-minded person an very much looked forward to watching this film from a director whose work I have sometimes loved (dazed and confused).
The story is simple, two people meet on a train, somehow manage to like each others' company in very short time and then spend a night walking the streets of Vienna, handing money to every beggar they meet and sucking up to the Austrian counter-culture.
I really did not like this film. Firstly, the characters are uninteresting. Hawke's Jesse appears to be mentally challenged and Delpy's Céline is a pretentious intellectual snob. Anyway, these guys spend a night talking about their half-cooked philosophy of the world and their idea of true, perfect love. You'll get the usual: rebel against your parents, true love never lasts, capitalism is bad, youth is good.
It seems obvious that the idea of this movie is to show two young people falling in true love. A type of love that everyone should wish for because it is pure. The viewer is supposed to be moved by the honesty and maybe naivety of these guys. And this is what seriously bothers me. This is a relationship seen through the eyes of an older person, nostalgic of the innocence of his youth. The result is that Jesse and Céline aren't authentic, they are not convincing, rather clichés, they are just somebody else's fantasies.
I did however enjoy the simplicity of this movie. The plot, the pace, etc.
Enough said.