Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater, 1995)

Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke in Before Sunrise

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Andrea Eckert, Hanno Pöschl, Karl Bruckschwaiger, Tex Rubinowitz, Erni Mangold, Dominik Castell, Haymon Maria Buttinger. Screenplay: Richard Linklater, Kim Krizan. Cinematography: Lee Daniel. Production design: Florian Reichmann. Film editing: Sandra Adair. Music: Fred Frith. 

If there were any justice, Before Sunrise would have transformed the genre of romantic comedy by showing them all how it should be done. Granted, the film neatly transcends the genre, even though it starts with the hoariest of all its formulas: the meet-cute. But by the film's end, we have gotten to know Ethan Hawke's Jesse and Julie Delpy's Céline as we never get to know the characters in the conventional romcom. And then the film does something those conventional ones never do: It stops. There's no rush through the streets by lovers who've decided to reconcile. There are no hilarious exchanges of marriage vows. The movie doesn't tell us if Jesse and Céline ever meet again after he takes his plane to the States and she takes her train to Paris. Granted, the sequels do this, but think how tonic this first film in the trilogy was when it was first released. (And even the sequels don't behave like sequels, but that's another post entirely.) It's hard to undervalue how revelatory Before Sunrise was at the time. For one thing, it established Hawke as one of the best and smartest young actors of his day, taking him out of the "pretty boy" category into which he started to fall after his first big hit, Dead Poets Society (Peter Weir, 1989). It also established Richard Linklater as a director of intelligence, with an interest in the effects of time on personality that culminated in his masterpiece, Boyhood (2014). That the film didn't do as much for Delpy's career is probably more evidence that women don't have the same influence in movies as men. (She also revealed later that she wasn't paid as much as Hawke until the third film in the trilogy, Before Midnight, in 2013.) Delpy and Hawke also rewrote a good deal of the screenplay without credit. 

Revanche (Götz Spielmann, 2008)

Revanche (Götz Spielmann, 2008)

Cast: Johannes Krisch, Irina Potapenko, Andreas Lust, Ursula Strauss, Johannes Thanheiser, Hanno Pöschl. Screenplay: Götz Speilmann. Cinematography: Martin Gschlacht. Production design: Maria Gruber. Film editing: Karina Ressler. 

Querelle (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982)

It's tempting to make jokes about Rainer Werner Fassbinder's last film, Querelle, which does sometimes look like a staging of Billy Budd designed by Tom of Finland. But for all its often overheated, overstylized, absurd moments, there is a a deep sadness at the core of the film. It was made, after all, at the beginning of the age of AIDS, from which its star, Brad Davis, would die. And even though it misses the poetry of the novel by Jean Genet on which Fassbinder and Burkhard Driest based their screenplay, it contains the essential sympathy for transgressors and outcasts that marks the work of both Genet and Fassbinder. That it no longer has the power to shock -- you can see far more outrageous images and situations on pay TV channels almost any night of the week -- almost works to its benefit. It has become a period piece almost before its time, but to say that it's "dated" is to miss the point. Querelle reflects an age of repression: The central character of the film, I think, is Franco Nero's Lt. Seblon, dictating his lust for Querelle into his tape recorder, watching the less-inhibited society of Lysiane (Jeanne Moreau), Nono (Günther Kaufmannn), and the others who circle around Querelle like moths, swooping in for satisfaction and sometimes getting their wings singed. Is it a good film? No. The performances -- especially Davis's, whose line readings are sometimes amateurish -- don't measure up. The interpolated religious symbolism feels trite. The narrative, especially when it involves Gil and his double, Robert (Hanno Pöschl), is confusingly handled. But is it worth being annoyed and disappointed by? Absolutely.