Early in Before Sunset, the young American author Jesse (Ethan Hawke) divides people into three camps: romantics who believe in happy endings, cynics who don’t, and the rest of us, who hope for good things, but just aren’t sure. This sort of categorization is as good an explanation as any of why this movie, and its predecessor, Before Sunrise, has a small but fiercely loyal following. We aren’t all romantics, and others are unlikely to enjoy this mix of intelligent dialogue, beautiful European settings, and unabashedly romantic context.
Before Sunrise introduced us to Jesse and Celine (Julie Delpy), then early 20s travellers who met on a train as it arrived in Vienna and spent the night walking and talking and falling in love. The movie ends ambiguously, with the two parting, promising to meet again in six months. Jesse’s categorization of romantics and cynics is in response to a journalist’s question nine years later, as he has written a novel based on that one night and it too ends ambiguously. We soon learn what happened, as Jesse and Celine meet and proceed to do a decade-later daytime version of their earlier conversation, this time wandering the streets of Paris.
Before Sunset is made for romantics, but it’s also painfully honest, as Jesse and Celine have had their ups and downs over the years and the simple optimism of Before Sunrise is replaced with a slightly harder edged sense of experience, not to mention disappointment over some of their past decisions. Filmed virtually in real-time, the movie is one long conversation, and it’s a fascinating one, with the now early-30s Jesse and Celine baring their souls while carefully inching toward fully expressing their deep regret over missed opportunities.
If you enjoy intelligent dialogue and believe in love, then you’ll enjoy this film, as that’s essentially all you get. There is no action, no intrigue beyond the obvious question – will these two get together? – but plenty of stimulating, sometimes humorous, and occasionally heartbreaking conversation about life, love, and the prospects for a better future.
Director Richard Linklater co-wrote the script along with Hawke and Delpy, and their close collaboration really shows. They spent years waiting for the concept to come clear, months writing dialogue, three weeks rehearsing, and then shot the film in just 14 days, and the result seems utterly natural from start to finish. Hawke may seem stiff and uncomfortable in some of his other roles, but here he really just is Jesse, a young man asking himself whether this is all there is. And Delpy adds layers of pain to Celine, making her a much deeper and far more interesting character than she was in the first movie.
Linklater’s greatest accomplishment here is to make sure he has a great script, set the 80-minute conversation in beautiful spots, and then get out of the way and let the dialogue flow.
Some people will find Before Sunset too Spartan, too loaded with shallow philosophizing and too optimistic. But those for whom the film works will look at the same attributes and see them as strengths – the movie stays nicely focused, it raises big issues but in an accessible way, and, well, if you condemn a movie for being optimistic, there’s not a whole lot of room for debate. You either buy it or you don’t.
I bought Before Sunset from start to finish, and the fans of the first movie, who waited with bated breath to see what was going to happen next for Jesse and Celine will be thrilled with how Linklater, Hawke and Delpy have handled it.
