Cast: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy

Director: Richard Linklater

Screenplay: Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy

Running time: 1 hr 27 minutes

Genre: Romance


CRITIQUE:


Hardly ever romantic comedies do get sequels. Even the great ones remain singular. This argument contends that you can never make a sequel to When Harry Met Sally or Annie Hall. But this deceptively simple concept of boy-meets-girl has a strangely familiar conceit that since the predecessor took place before a sunrise in Vienna, of course, there’s still a sunset to glimpse. And this one is just gorgeous. Like watching sunsets, the closure of a day, the dying of the sun in its blazing glory, bathes the picture in a mesmerising glow that’s all romantic, ironic and poignant at the same time – Before Sunset is that all-too-rare of a sequel because it’s even better than the first one. The abrupt meeting in a Euro-train has been done and dusted, but 9 years later, Jesse and Celine meet once again in a twist of fate, as exceptional as lightning strikes the same place twice. He has become a writer, and she has become an environmental activist. He has written a book about that episode 9 years ago, she has been trying to forget it, but despairingly fails. But all is not revealed straight away. Just like its former, the whole movie is spent walking, talking, schmoozing; but this is a technical achievement, its grounded cinematography tries brilliantly to capture these two people in real-time, as though the entire running-time seems to follow the exact timing of their conversations, from start to finish, and Linklater obviously shuns any erratic form of editing, making this a natural walkabout and talkathon. With the help of Hawke and Delpy this time, the dialogues are enigmatically engaging, their subject matters more adult and human – philosophy, sex, sleep-patterns, personal life, his married life, in which he described “running a nursery with someone you’ve dated before”, anxieties, her loneliness and being numbed – Hawke and Delpy’s characters feel so real they’re very tangible humans, they seem to be barely acting at all. But it’s those years of uncertainty, detachment, pain, and adult angst that gives this picture a more intelligent approach, a more realistic, more visceral in its emotionality. The result is poignant, emotionally urgent, and exquisitely structured. There’s no pretensions; perhaps its pseudo-ambiguous ending might put people off, as Celine utters in a Nina Simone smoky voice: “Baby, you’re gonna miss your plane.” And he responds: “I know.” It’s heart-warmingly palpable.


VERDICT:

Before Sunset is, to borrow Vonnegut’s words, like a bug trapped in the amber of a moment. It lingers in the mind, and it’s a film worth to be treasured.



RATING: A