Before Sunset (2004)

Premise: Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) meet up again in Paris nine years later at the end of Jesse’s French book tour, where he is promoting a book that is strangely similar to that night they spend together all those years ago. Jesse has about an hour and a half before he must fly back to America, and he and Celine decide to spend it catching up.

So, in case it isn’t clear, it’s the sequel to Before Sunrise, and it occurs in real time.

Also, if you thought the first film was dialogue heavy, you have no idea. The film is a constant conversation, free of nervous pauses and, well, action. They simply wander the streets of Paris, winding away their time with a contrasted sense of urgency and intimacy.

I’d love to fill you in on all the details of if they did meet up again six months later and what happened, but that would be a betrayal.

This film, in addition to being a sequel that outdoes the first, can be almost agony to watch. Richard Linklater (director and co-writer) gives you the sense that you are watching something frighteningly private. You are absolutely glued in place yet oddly wondering if you should look away as though you are inappropriately watching something you really shouldn’t be looking at.

Hawke, Delpy, and Linklater co-writing this sequel together was a stroke of genius. The scene where Celine and Jesse ask each other if their appearances have changed is one of the most telling in the movie.

Hawke is possessed of an animal magnetism that his nervous school boy lacked in the first movie, and Delpy brings newfound sensuality to her character.

The true test of their mettle is the fragility that their characters now possess. I’m often told that youth live their lives as though they believe that they are invincible. At 32, their characters have found their mortality, and they fill it with an immediacy that is heartbreaking to consider.

Like all good films, the air is electric with conversation and possibilities afterwards. You walk into the film not knowing what you are getting yourself into, and you leave with the exact same feeling.