Before Sunset   

Jesse: Ethan Hawke

Celine: Julie Delpy

Directed by Richard Linklater

Written by Richard Linklater &

Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke

We were first introduced to Jesse and Celine, played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, in 1995's Before Sunrise.  Jesse was a young American in Europe coming off a breakup when he meets Celine on a train.  He convinces her to get off with him in Vienna and spend the day together before his plane leaves the next morning.  They spend most of the day and night talking about anything and everything they can think of and developing an attraction for each other. 

The movie was effective in the way that it treated the relationship between the two honestly.  It didn't pull any punches.  Linklater chose to simply show what would happen to two people full of ideas and optimism who happen to meet.  Our last image is of them in a train station planning to meet again in six months.

Before Sunrise picks up the story nine years later.  Jesse is in Paris on the last stop of his book tour - a book he wrote detailing the incredible night he shared with Celine.  Celine, who now lives in Paris, stops by the bookstore and the two reacquaint themselves before Jesse's flight leaves Paris that night.

The first half of the movie deals with Jesse and Celine's changing worldviews over the last nine years.  They do find out what each other did on the day they were supposed to meet, what they now do for a living, and where they are in their lives.  But the main focus is on how they both have changed since the last time they were together.  They still have interesting ideas about their lives and the world around them, but they are now seen through the eyes of two people who no longer have that fresh-faced idealism of youth. 

As the day winds on, the focus of the conversation shifts to the effects of their chance meeting in Vienna, and how it has defined certain aspects of their lives.  Their perfect day has been romanticized in their minds to the point that they have an unrealistic view of how their lives should be (or is it really unrealistic?).  It's an honest look at how people often look back in the past, point to specific events, and say to themselves, "that's where I screwed up," or "that's what I should have done differently."

Linklater's direction is minimal and effective.  He doesn't allow anything to get in the way of Jesse and Celine.  He uses long steadicam shots that follow the actors wherever they go and pick up whatever they say.  You become so engrossed with these two characters that you hardly notice that you've just been following them down a street for ten minutes, sometimes even longer.

A movie like this is only as good as the actors in it, and both Hawke and Delpy do wonderful jobs.  They are successfully able to bring Jesse and Celine into the present, and this movie works so well because of their ability to command the screen with these personas they have skillfully created.

I enjoyed this movie a little better than its predecessor, even though both are equally accomplished films.  The direction their lives have taken and the consequences of their first meeting are inherently more interesting to me than that original encounter. 

Like the first film, Before Sunset also ends on a slightly ambiguous note.  To me, it's more hopeful than the ending in the train station in Before Sunrise.  In that movie, you had the feeling that there was no way these two would find each other again.  There was the sense that the perfect night between these two people would go wasted and unrewarded.

Here, despite the difficulties in life that these two have been forced to face, their second meeting generates some optimism.  It does not matter where these people are in their lives or what they have previously done.  They aren't stuck.  They can get back to what they once believed or they can now concentrate on the things that they once thought were so important.  Growing older does not mean you have to give up on your future or the ideas of your past, and it is extremely satisfying when you see these two realize that.  I can only imagine what the next nine years have in store for Jesse and Celine.