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Review: 'Before Sunset' beautiful, funny
« on: Jul 9th, 2004, 7:37pm » |
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Review: 'Before Sunset' beautiful, funny
Sequel to 'Before Sunrise' rich and deep
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
Friday, July 2, 2004 Posted: 10:34 AM EDT (1434 GMT)
(AP) -- You probably haven't been lying awake in bed at night wondering what happened to Jesse and Celine, the strangers who met in Vienna and fell in love over the course of a night in 1995's "Before Sunrise."
But you'll be happy to see them reunite nine years later in the sweet, funny sequel, "Before Sunset."
It's a lovely, beguiling little film -- a rare treat during this overheated season of blockbusters. It's also an unusual example of a follow-up that doesn't seem forced, but expands effortlessly on the original.
(Though you don't need to have seen the first film to appreciate the simple pleasures of "Before Sunset" -- key moments are recapped in the beginning -- the experience will be more enjoyable if you have. Renting the original and seeing it right beforehand is an even better idea.)
Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy re-team with director Richard Linklater, with whom they wrote the screenplay, and reveal that their characters, Jesse and Celine, never reconnected in Vienna six months later as they'd promised at the end of the first film.
But here, they end up spending a couple of hours together wandering around Paris, where their banter is just as natural and their chemistry is just as alive.
Jesse, now a novelist living in New York, is there on his book tour. Celine, the Frenchwoman, lives in Paris and walks into the bookstore where Jesse is making an appearance. Despite the passage of nearly a decade, and although they're involved with other people, their mutual attraction is immediate.
(And who could blame them? Delpy is even more naturally beautiful than she was in the original. Hawke has a magnetic confidence that comes with maturity, especially compared to how boyishly rounded his features appear during flashbacks at the film's start.)
They only have a short time before Jesse has to fly back home, and spend it sharing coffee and cigarettes in a cafe, walking the streets and cruising on a tourist boat. What they do isn't as important, though, as what they say.
"Before Sunset" takes place in real time, and as in most Linklater movies (including the indie hit "Slacker" and the self-important "Waking Life") the characters chatter non-stop. Their dialogue never seems stilted, though -- it springs organically and meanders everywhere like real conversations do, from small talk about their jobs into heavier territory about their relationships.
They argue about whether they had sex that night -- he insists they did, she can't recall -- and a palpable tension builds as it seems that Jesse's on the verge of trying to kiss Celine on a park bench.
"I was a total dork," he says after admitting that he showed up in Vienna six months after their initial meeting, and she never made it.
But later he wonders aloud, "Our lives could have been so much different," and divulges that life at home with his wife and 4-year-old son isn't nearly as perfect as he made it seem when he and Celine began catching up.
After having sung her boyfriend's praises initially, Celine also must confess that she's had difficulty connecting with other men since her long-ago night with Jesse. But she doesn't say this in a melodramatic way -- and that's much of the beauty of "Before Sunset." It always seems real and believable, and although it's romantic, it never goes for the easy or the feel-good.
Who hasn't had an instant spark with someone new and wondered long afterward, what if? Everyone has -- and they'll find that sentiment depicted here, with insight and delicate charm.
"Before Sunset," a Warner Independent Pictures release, is rated R for language and sexual references.
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