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BEFORE SUNSET
by Peter Sobczynski

July 2, 2004

(out of 4 stars)

FILM CREDITS: Written by Richard Linklater & Ethan Hawke & Julie Delpy. Directed by Richard Linklater. Starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. MPAA Rating is R (for language and sexual references). Distributed: by Warner Independent Pictures.

Richard Linklater’s 1995 gem "Before Sunrise", you will recall, chronicled the evening-long conversation/flirtation shared by two twentysomethings-American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and French Celine (Julie Delpy)-after they met and impulsively decided to get off of the train they were riding in Vienna to spend their remaining hours together before going to their respective homes. Surprisingly, the film ended on a note more realistic than romantic; they parted at the Vienna train station and promised that they would return to that spot six months later. As wonderful as the rest of the film was, it was this final scene that truly made "Before Sunrise" special. Instead of taking the easy way out, Linklater and co-writer Kim Krizan wisely assumed that their audience would be mature enough to handle an ending that didn’t take the easy way out, remained true to the characters and gave them enough inspiration for lengthy, late-night conversations of their own. (They may have also assumed that the type of audience that would have craved a more cliched ending would have made for the exits once they realized that the film was going to be nothing more than two people talking for 100 minutes.) Even more intriguingly, the very last shots of the film are ambiguous enough that it could be interpreted that they never did go off together and that the film was just the imagined perfect evening that might have occurred if they had the courage to talk to each other in the first place.

The problem with doing a follow-up film is that, by definition, the open-ended nature of that first film would have to be ruined-not unlike the drum that the boy cut open to discover what made the noise. If they got back together, that would mean that they got back together and any further discussions/interpretations of that original conclusion would be moot. Although the loss of that ambiguity is sad, it is the only tiny flaw in "Before Sunset", an exquisite follow-up that not only honors the first film but also enhances it. What Linklater, Hawke and Delpy (who all collaborated on the screenplay) have done here is really quite extraordinary-they have come up with a film that retains all the qualities of the original but which also recognizes that people and attitudes inevitably change in unexpected ways over the years.

The film takes place nine years after the events in "Before Sunrise" and is set in Paris, where Jesse is on the last stop on a tour promoting his first novel-a thinly disguised recounting of that night in Vienna. While ducking questions about the autobiographical nature of the story and the ambiguous ending from journalists (the same kind of questions that Linklater has himself doubtlessly been inundated with), Jesse spots Celine hanging out in the corner of the bookstore where he is doing his reading (it turns out that they did not meet up in Vienna as planned). With about an hour to spare before he must catch a plane to return home to America, the two decide to go and grab a cup of coffee and then go for a walk. After settling the question of what happened with the aborted meeting, they begin to catch up and before long, they are in the middle of another engrossing conversation.

Among the topics are the book (Celine is ambivalent towards it: "It’s disturbing being part of someone else’s memory"), the sociopolitical situation ("You aren’t one of those Freedom-Fries Americans, are you?"), sex (they debate whether or not they actually did the deed long ago), art, love and death. They learn that they might have spotted each other in the ensuing time apart when Celine went to study at NYU. They discuss the natures of Communism, Buddhism and personal intimacy. (Jesse, we learn, is in the middle of a crumbling marriage and Celine’s relationships tend to fall apart after a few months.) Near the end, the pressure of too much to say and do and not enough time (is there ever?) to do it finally overwhelms Celine and she erupts at Jesse in a taxicab (although we discover that she has also used art to come to terms with that night). This leads to an amazing final scene in an apartment that somehow, against all odds, manages to come up with a conclusion that is just as satisfying and oblique as the one in "Before Sunrise"-and with the best final lines of dialogue in recent memory.

For Delpy and Hawke, this is more than just another acting job. Clearly, the roles of Jesse and Celine are more personally meaningful to them (certainly more so than the parts they had in "Taking Lives" or "An American Werewolf in Paris") and the chance to get to explore how those characters (as well as themselves, I presume) have changed over time has inspired some great work. The two have an easy, unforced chemistry together and they always feel like two spirited and intelligent people having a genuine conversation about their hopes, fears, loves and concerns instead of two actors waiting for each other to stop speaking before reciting their own lines. Add to that the enormous technical challenges of the roles (the long, unbroken takes favored by Linklater and the real-time structure of the story require an enormous amount of concentration from them) and you have two of the finest performances you are likely to see this year-acting so good and strong that it hardly feels like acting.

For Linklater, "Before Sunset" confirms his position as one of the most accomplished American directors working today-one as adept with formal experimentation (he tends to favor stories with compressed time-frames) as with actors and what they require. (To date, he is the only filmmaker to consistently get interesting work from Ethan Hawke.) Some may have feared that, after the unexpected success of "School of Rock" (a film which, by the way, looks better and better as the shock of the very idea of it wears away), he might have abandoned his artistic impulses in order to become another blockbuster-chasing hack. Based on his work here, it looks like he may be following in the footsteps of Steven Soderbergh, another director who has managed to straddle the line between big-studio projects and quirkier personal fare without the former feeling like a sell-out and the latter like willful obtuseness.

In its own small way, "Before Sunset" is a perfect film-if we define "perfect" in the sense that Linklater (as well as Hawke and Delpy, who also receive screenwriting credit) has a specific notion for a film and achieved it without any flaws, mistakes or questionable choices. There is not a single scene in this film that I would want to change or alter in any way. If audiences had a chance to see it, I suspect that they would agree (and the success of "Lost in Translation" would suggest that there is a market for a low-key film like this) and I can only hope that it is able to serve as counter-programming for an audience burned out on the usual retread sequels. Those films, for the most part, are made for one reason-the original made money. "Before Sunset", by comparison, may be the only time in Hollywood history where the artistic reasons for making a sequel far outweighed the financial considerations.

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2004 Peter Sobczynski
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While the views expressed by Peter Sobczynski do not necessarily reflect the views of Criticdoctor.com, the Critic Doctor will occasionally examine Mr. Sobczynski's film reviews to bring forth an honest examination of those views expressed.