Adverse selection

Rating: 1/10 (22 July 2005)

Pick a french girl, put her on a random travel, say a train from Budapest to Paris. But wait -- she's not your average french girl, after all, because she can speak PERFECTLY English. That's pretty uncommon for a country where the use of foreign languages is officially forbidden, but you don't want to be too picky, right? This is a movie after all! Now pick your average American boy, coming to Old Europe to meet his girlfriend -- but she is a really average girlfriend, one that comes to Old Europe for some kind of art study (we are allowed to think that this is not the real reason, or that art studies are useless - you choose); however, she is pretty average, so she ended up cheating on him and when he arrives, he soon realizes he's going to be dumped.
He buys an interrail ticket and he too ends up on a Budapest-Paris train, only to bump into that not-so-average french girl who's still a student at Sorbonne because she doesn't feel like she's ready for a real life (and she's only 23 yo) Could they avoid falling in love? The answer is no. This is all the plot. The rest is about 90' of them getting closer, with Wien as a cute backdrop for their story.
In this 'wannabe art' movie we can really see how nothingness can be stirred to fill up the standard Hollywood length of 100 minutes: two people chatting about nothing and trying hard to make it feel real.
But this IS Hollywood: because there's not even a little bit of something real in this movie. It's a movie that leverages the dream that you, as a foreigner in a foreign country, could start chatting with a beautiful stranger and then fall in love.
I could stand the cute 'what if' scenario, if only it managed to build up something for you to ponder - but there is no food for the mind here to be found.
I watched 'Before Sunrise' out of curiosity because I've read so much good about it, but now I understand that the only people who cared about it are the ones who like to view themselves as 'romantic'.
Look in the mirror: are you a so-called 'romantic' kind of person? then this movie is for you. Otherwise, keep away!