A real life connection playing before your eyes

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	• Before Sunset (P&S Dol) [VHS] Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy Warner Home Video, 2004 average customer review:based on 220 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Ecstatic

Paris, 2003. Jesse, an American writer in his early 30s, is signing books and giving a talk at Shakespeare & Company, the famed Parisian bookseller that first printed "Ulysses" in 1922. The book chronicles a one-night stand nearly a decade earlier that he just can't get out of his mind. As he is about to finish, he locks eyes for a moment on a particular face in the stacks: Celine, the woman he met nine years before on a summer night in Vienna. For anyone who has seen and loved BEFORE SUNRISE, the film chronicling that meeting, the moment of recognition in this sequel comes as an all-time great moment in cinema...five minutes in, and I knew I was in the presence of greatness.

Celine and Jesse go for a cup of coffee at a café, traversing a half-dozen windy, ancient Parisian streets, and they talk about careers and education, what has led them to this place. Interestingly enough, the dialog was largely scripted by the actors, and they both express (non-acting) interests that mirror the real lives of Hawke (a successful novelist) and Delpy (an environmental activist and musician who has recorded a couple of albums); they also play to their ages and they play characters that are reasonably successful in the outward sense, so a great aura of realism is maintained with little effort. This allows the dialog to ebb and flow, to continue easily for the 80 minute duration of this real-time walk through the streets and gardens of Paris, through life, career, love, lust, politics.

And it all may seem very boring to you, if what you expect is "drama" and "event"; if you expect your romances to be full of sex and unbelievable situations and jealousy and hysteria. BEFORE SUNSET is 80 minutes of two very intelligent, articulate people reacquainting themselves with each other, reawakening to youthful aspirations and romantic hopes that they assumed were withering. It's a paean to French ideals and American excesses, to Paris and to music and to architecture and literature, all conveyed in the expressions and words of two hopeless romantics and in the passion their director has for the noble idea, so rarely practiced, of the importance and power of each day, each hour, each minute of life.

I'm going on a bit perhaps, but I cannot think of a more "real", knowing film about love, about the lost past and the hopeful future than this minimalist tour through the eyes of a brazen Texan and a talkative Parisian. It's easy for me to fall in love with actresses, but Julie Delpy is simply unbelievable here and I've rarely felt more jealous in a movie than I did of Ethan Hawke (who I rarely like, but is as perfect here as he was in the earlier film).

There are many wonderful allusions to film history in this hour and a third but the most potent is the short cruise down the Seine near the end, which brings to mind most obviously two of the most romantic and expressionist films in French history, Vigo's L'ATALANTE (1934) and Carax' LES AMANTS DU PONT NEUF (1991). I was wondering if this film would end there, but instead the couple detours to Celine's apartment for the stunning, very appropriate finale.

Along with it's predecessor, one of the very greatest films about falling in love - an re-falling - in the history of cinema.

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bliss

I love this movie and it was in brand new condition when I received it.
It came in about a week and a half of purchasing it.

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Better than the first

I absolutely enjoyed this movie. You must watch the Before Sunrise first. It's more than your typical love story. The intelligent and candid dialogue makes the movie so intriguing and realistic.

A real life connection playing before your eyes

I think it depends on your age and frame of mind, but I identified with Before Sunset more than Before Sunrise. Both are must-sees and genius work by Richard Linklater. It's impressive enough that the entire 3 hours of screenplay between the two is pure dialogue between 2 people. But the reality of the conversation, the stumbling, the idiomatic expressions, mispronunciations - everything is just so real. In Before Sunrise, it seemed a little odd that Jesse (Hawke) just said he was from the "US", with no real city identified. Before Sunset is a much more mature interaction.

Ethan Hawke is a fine actor, but Julie Delpy really blew me away. A couple of my favorite quotes by Celine (Delpy) from the ferry ride just before Jesse has to leave for the airport:

Questioning how lasting their relationship might have been or could be...
"Maybe we're only good at brief encounters walking around in European cities in warm climate."

Rationalizing the mistake they both made by not exchanging phone #'s/addresses...
"I guess when you're young, you just believe there will be many people who you connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times."

That last quote really hit home for me. I do hope Linklater makes a 3rd part to this story, though my sense is that he wants the viewer to make up his mind as to what happens next. Similar to the way Jesse's book ends. The reader doesn't actually know what happens after that one night.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

In 1994, director Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, Waking Life) made Before Sunrise, a gorgeous poem of a movie about two strangers (played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) wandering around Vienna, talking, and falling in love. Ten years later, Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy have returned with Before Sunset, which reunites the same characters after Hawke has written a book about that night. Delpy appears at the final book reading of his European tour; they have less than two hours before Hawke has to catch a flight to New York...and in that time, they walk around Paris, talk, and fall in love all over again. It sounds simple, perhaps dull, but it's written with such skill and care and acted with such richness that it's a miracle of filmmaking. On its own, Before Sunset is moving and wonderful; seen right after Before Sunrise, it will break your heart. --Bret Fetzer

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