Before Sunset Review
by Jonathan F. Richards (moviecritic AT prodigy DOT net)July 20th, 2004
Jonathan Richards
BEFORE SUNSET
Directed by Richard Linklater
Written by Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke
With Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke
Rated R, 80 minutes
TIME TRAVEL
In Before Sunrise, Richard Linklater's 1994 film that introduced Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and their talky, romantic ways, Jesse meets Celine on a Eurail train bound for Paris. He sweet-talks her into getting off and spending the night with him walking around Vienna before he catches a plane home. Someday, he tells her, when they're both married and tired of their spouses, they'll look back and wonder about the ones that got away. "Think of this as time travel," he says.
Think of Before Sunset as time travel. This exquisite sequel rediscovers Celine and Jesse nine years later, nine years older, nine years removed from the most magical night of their lives. If you remember that night, you will remember that it ended with the young lovers parting in the Vienna railroad station and agreeing to meet at the same spot in six months. Until now, we haven't known what happened.
It's the summer of 2003, and Jesse is on a book tour of Europe promoting his first novel. The novel, as it happens, is the story of that night, with the same open-ended conclusion. "Did they meet or not?" asks someone at his Paris book-signing. Jesse gives a wry smile. "That depends if you're a romantic or a cynic." And then he looks up and sees Celine.
The years have barely ruffled a hair on her beautiful head. They've been good to him too, although close inspection shows a little sadness around his eyes, a bit of wariness in the creases at his mouth. "Do you want to go for coffee?" he asks. He has a little time before his plane, and a driver waiting to take him to the airport. "I know a café nearby," she says.
They walk. And they talk. They have coffee, and they talk, and they walk and talk some more. The moods and the rhythms suggest the classic films of Eric Rohmer, where the topography of romance is explored through the romance of ideas in the luxury of conversation.
One of them, it turns out, showed up in Vienna that December, the other did not. Both wanted to, but something unavoidable intervened. And so that moment of gorgeous possibility passed them by.
They circle subjects with teasing, exploratory jabs of semi-awkward banter. She saw his picture in the paper, and has read his book, twice. "I wrote it, in a way, to try to find you," he admits. Celine is single, and works for an environmental organization. Jesse is married, and has a son, but his marriage has grown stale. "I feel like I'm running a small nursery with someone I used to date," he says. Sometimes he grows wistful, sometimes she gets angry, but they never lose their shared sense of wonder and longing in this reunion.
The movie unfolds in real time, in long, lazy takes. In real life they might have sat for an hour and a half in the café, oblivious, but this is a movie and they have to move, so they wander down streets and through gardens and hop on a bateau-mouche to drift down the Seine past Notre Dame. You can feel Linklater consciously moving them around, but it never takes on the self-consciousness of a travelogue.
Delpy and Hawke are both splendid actors, and they've never been better. They created their dialogue in collaboration with Linklater, and it has an utterly spontaneous feel. A good deal of it comes out of their own lives. Jesse and Celine are funny, they're tender, they're wistful, they're intelligent. They're gathering in a decade of "what ifs" from the Paris atmosphere, living against the clock as his departure for the airport looms. They're old enough now to have a better idea of how many romantic miracles life lobs at you along the way, but they also know that the intensity of this moment is made possible by those missing nine years – they have, after all, spent altogether less than 24 hours in each other's company. "Maybe we're only good at brief encounters," she says. "That sort of consuming desire doesn't last. If it did, we'd have aneurisms."
The clock is ticking. The car is waiting. To stretch the moment out a little longer he gives her a ride home. He walks her into her courtyard. She picks up her cat, and they walk up the stairs to her apartment. The sexual symbolism is palpable as they slowly climb the shaft of the circular staircase with Celine's cat draped over her arm. She hands the furry creature to Jesse to hold while she fits her key in the lock.
One cup of tea. One song. One more minute.
"You're going to miss your plane...."
This sequel offers us what it offers its characters – a second chance at a memorable romance. We're all a little older and more experienced, if not wiser, than we were when Celine and Jesse first met and fell in love. This time, too, Linklater gives us an open ending that leaves us wondering if and where we might meet these two again in another decade or so.
DETAILS
Before Sunset, romance
De Vargas, 988-2775
R, 80 minutes
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
