Richard Linklater

The flâneur on film

BeforeSunrise

Rob Stone on Richard Linklater and the dérive in cinema.

The flâneur’s accumulation of experiences and influences often results in an indistinct outcast figure, one who walks to a different rhythm, defined and maintained by an absence of clear origins and a lack of explicit direction. Consequently, the flâneur can be disruptive where a sense of rootlessness and rejection of settlement renders the figure as threatening Other.