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Richard Linklater, the Woody Allen for the slacker generation, swerves us down the narrow streets and garden pathways of Paris with elongated tracking shots of a couple's conversational get-to-know-yous, picking up where they left off nine years ago in Before Sunrise.
Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), after spending two hours together one night, nine years ago, run into each other again. Jesse is in Paris hawking his novel, which he wrote about the aforementioned one night. Jesse and Celine pair off here, with only about an hour or so until he must get on a plane and go back to New York - again, like in Before Sunrise they only have a little time together. They discuss why they never met again, like they promised to do on that night. They talk about their lives now - Jesse is married and Celine is in a serious relationship. They talk and talk and talk and not for a moment do we get bored or tired at their conversation. Right up until the final scene (which you will either love or hate - I loved it) these two discuss everything from love to sex to literature to the environment to gun control and we are enthralled by them the entire time.
Although Linklater is to be complemented for his rather etheral yet matter-of-fact camera style here, and for being one of the best young Auteurs in America, it is Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy who wrote most of the dialogue you here them speak - Delpy also wrote and performed the music in the film - and they should get some credit too. Hawke, who I always thought of as a rather childish amateur, has grown into a mature charming actor in the past five years or so, and, of course, the lovely Julie Delpy is always both alluringly funny and pleasingly aloof.
The second best American film of 2004 (I still have a soft spot for Kill Bill) is never tiring and never a bore (unlike the four plebians sitting behind us at the Midtown Cinema thought). Before Sunset is a real time converational wonder full of beautiful twisting camerawork through cobblestone side streets and Parisan cafes and even on a tourist boat down the Seine, and it ends...oh yea, go find out for yourselves...
- July 25, 2004
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